On Being Stuck

"On Being Stuck" was written in response to someone I met who had suffered an enormous loss and had become, “stuck.” What I’m trying to convey is that you don’t, ”get over it,” but rather adjust to living your life in the knowledge that this loss will always be a part of you.

If you take a sort of Ancient Greek view of the world, then it’s possible to envisage a world where sometimes the Gods get bored and decide to test one of the mortals down on earth below. The task they set is to walk down the road whilst carrying an enormous sack of rice.

The Gods assure the mortals that it can be done but never tell them how.

So, when the mortals lumbered with this task first pick it up, the weight is so incredible feel crushed and drop it straight back down.

Some walk off down the road, never look back and are cursed with a tremendous feeling of unreality and despite the flowers along the roadside and the company along the way feel as if they walk alone through a dessert.

Some walk off a short way down the road and find themselves drawn back to the sack, try once more to lift it only to find they are no stronger nor the sack any lighter; sit around; walk away only to repeat the cycle over and over.

All of them know they are correct in their belief that none can carry the sack all the way along life’s road, yet the Gods have told them it can be done.

What they have not been told is that in the sack there is a small hole from which rice can escape only when the burden is shouldered. At first the rice drains out so slowly that the weight remains almost unbearable, and the only desire is to put it back down.

It takes so much effort to hold it that they make little or no progress down the road and certainly have no interest in the flowers by the roadside or the company along the way.

As they stagger on however, they find that for brief episodes they find they have become so familiar with their burden that they do notice the flowers and the company. The further they go, the less rice in the sack, till they find they can walk along the road, notice the views and enjoy the company of their other travellers, almost as much as those the Gods have not so burdened.

They never put the sack down, since it becomes almost a part of them and to that extent they keep their burden, but the weight ceases to handicap them.

For some the sack ceases to be a burden at all and can become something they can wrap around them when they need it most.

Since mortals are not free to see the hole in the sack, nor the rice falling from it, it takes some believing.

As solutions go, it seems a poor strategy to believe in holes, but not believing in them may be a whole lot worse.