My middle one is coming home from school in a few weeks and we are going to go for a ruck. So, I’m thinking about rucksacks.
//Transcript//
Hey, I came across a quote this week, and I wanted to share it with you. Let me find it. Here it is.
“Because here's another sneaky little truth about life. You can't be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can’t.”
That's from Mark Manson.
I was in the Army for a while and one of the skills that they taught me through an incredible amount of repetition is how to carry a rucksack. Sometimes an army issued rucksack, sometimes it wasn't, but what you do is you fill it up with the bullets, beams, band aids, whatever you need for the mission.
You cross load with the guys to your left and your right because you never know who's going to go down, get lost, get blown up, and you want to have everything that you need. And then you put it on and you start walking and you don't quit. And it's about the mission. Just keep going one foot in front of another.
And then one night I found myself on a hilltop. And our mission was to mark a drop zone. And it was a very small DZ right up there and it was surrounded by these thick woods. And these weren't just like, I'm going to move through the trees woods. These were just, you can't move through the trees and you got to break brush to get through lots of wait a minute, vine stopping you.
And in a bout of frustration, our medic just took his rucksack off and he started throwing it into the woods, breaking a path. Not good for noise discipline whatsoever, but it worked. And he just tossed it and tossed it and tossed it and eventually got out there and he could put up the marker we needed. The aircraft came in, dropped this load and we got what we needed and we moved on. Mission accomplished.
Today, I still like walking in the woods with a rucksack, a real one, but I also have a metaphorical one that I walk around with too. It's filled with my responsibilities, my hopes, my dreams, my stories, my insecurities.
And on my very best days, I can stop and cross load my rucksack with the people around me. I can ask for help to the people to my left and my right. And then on my very, very, very best days, I put the rucksack down on the side of the trail and I take out all the stuff that doesn't matter anymore. My insecurities, my fear, the opinions of others.
And what I'm realizing in life is that what's in your rucksack or not is what's going to help you break that path in life. So you have to be really thoughtful. What you keep and what you take out and what you're intentional about cultivating. And the other part is there's people around you to cross load.
There are people who will help you bear the weight of that rucksack. It's not all on you. So be really thoughtful what you put in there and then just walk forward. Don't quit. Don't give up because you're not alone. So what's in your rucksack matters. I hope you're good out there.
Take care,
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