Check your emotional baggage!

Emotional baggage is something we all have. Sometimes we have so much we struggle and other times it feels like nothing more than a cute glo-mesh sling purse.

I'm one of those people that takes on so much emotional baggage, my own and others'. If somebody has a problem, I add it to my long list of things to worry about. My mind can race so fast that in all actuality, I sometimes can't recognise what it is in particular that I am worried about, just that I am worried. Sometimes if you could see all of my emotional baggage, I would resemble a Clyde Valley donkey...

There are other people, weird Zen-like creatures who, like miniature Buddhas consider emotional baggage and either deal with it or discard it. They hold onto nothing. I once read a story by a stressed out man who told of a conversation with his young daughter.

"Daddy, why are you sad?"
"I'm just worrying about some things."
"Well, if you can change it, change it and don't worry. If you can't change it there's nothing you can do, so don't worry."

That is an amazing attitude and I get that, I honestly do! But really, I just can't put it into practise. I can't quite explain why but I just can't. A sentiment I do understand is 'A problem shared is a problem halved'.

Well I stumbled across this site today. Emotional Bag Check. It's a site for everyone - as long as you love music, but really, who doesn't? When you click the link it will take you to a site with two options.

For the worriers, the donkeys, the stressed out, highly strung jack-in-the-boxes just waiting to unravel in an explosive and teary meltdown, there is this section. Once you can admit you have baggage, you check it here. It's a simple text box and you just rant. That part alone is a catharsis. I poured out everything. I just let it all out. I felt like crying as I wrote it but I kept going. Some things, as I wrote them down, I felt like there was no escape from - that I will be tethered to these problems forever. Others, seemed trivial. I imagined a stranger reading them and thinking to themselves, 'so what?' Perspective, you know? So after unloading as many problems as I could in what is probably a non-sensical rambling diatribe, I felt marginally better. I also gave them my email address. Nobody will see my email and I wasn't asked for my name or any other information. That is all I, the emotionally crippled, have to do. Easy and freeing.

For those peaceful free-thinkers with all the headspace in the world, there is this section. This person does something really wonderful and amazing. They read - the internet equvilant of listening - the problems of another. This person will be a perfect stranger and they will know nothing more about them than their problem. Now these individuals who live in their own personal Zen garden are usually great with helpful advice so it wouldn't be fair to deny them the chance to offer it. They do so in the form of a song. They think of a song that would cheer, uplift, inpsire or sympathtise with the emotional cripple. There's a database of songs on the site, you type in the song you've thought of and it will find it and you send it to the emotional cripple (without seeing their email address). You can add a short message if you like but that person will receive this song and message in their email inbox.

The exchange of baggage is now complete.

I tried out both. Quid pro quo. I checked my baggage in the hopes that someone will read it and send me a song - maybe every time I hear this song I can remember to be Zen-like and take two minutes to be calm and still. (I actually received two! See the songs I received below!) And to balance the Karma, I also sent a song. The baggage I am now sharing was from somebody who has had medical problems and now has another problem added to it. I sent them 'Beautiful Day' by U2 with the following message:

"The world is a beautiful place. It is even more so because you are in it. Be strong. xx"

Perhaps I should take my own advice sometimes, huh?

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• Did you 'check your baggage'? What song did you receive?
• Did you carry someone else's baggage? What was the problem and what song did you send them?
• How do you deal with emotional baggage?

"Strong Enough" - Stacie Orrico

"As I rest against this cold hard wall, will you pass me by? 

Will you criticize me as I sit and cry? 

I had fought so hard and thought that all my battles had been won 

Only to find the war had just begun"

"When I'm gone" - Eminem

"Have you ever loved someone so much, you'd give an arm for?

Not the expression, no, literally give an arm for?

When they know they're your heart

And you know you were their armour

And you will destroy anyone who would try to harm her

But what happens when karma, turns right around and bites you?"