Ghost of a Burden

August 21, 2024

Just a few seconds in to Kerry K’s recent video, I realized that she was speaking to me. We are finally letting go, she says, of any number of things. She enumerated several, but the one that leapt out and wrapped its skinny fingers around my neck was, “Burdens.”

The burden that immediately came to mind is multifaceted, imposed by outer circumstances. A problem without a solution, that ebbs and flows with a mournful sigh like a massive landlocked sea.

I can’t mitigate this problem through action or willpower, but I have faith that the burden will drop away at some point. It would suspend universal law for a third-dimensional circumstance to keep going forever, would it not?

*****

Some part of me was not content to wait upon the vagaries of fate. I longed for a change, a solution, a different way of doing things, before the All That Is deigned to fix things up in Universal Timing. 

Once I set aside the (eminently logical) litany of fearful what if’s, an inner door creaked open, sunlight blasted in, and the burden shank to a manageable little nugget off in the corner. Something I could pick up and carry in my pocket, or set upon a shelf, asking God to mind it while I went about my life.

I turned this nugget over to God and went on a carefree little jaunt, without allowing the burden to ride shotgun in the car. When I returned, the burden was where I had left it, safe on its shelf. God did not abandon me or shirk care of our mutual burden while I was AWOL. 

*****

I wonder how many other unwanted circumstances that feel welded to my spine are in fact nothing more than gossamer wings, detachable with a twitch of my shoulder blades? How many of those burdens aren’t really “mine” at all?

If I shift my sight, move my head and look at it aslant, a different vista appears, revelatory as an optical illusion illustration. There is no burden, no problem. I recalled the Shakespearean truth, nothing is good or bad but that thinking makes it so.

After a bit, I realized that the burden had become a ghost of its old self. I watched as even that ghost faded away, swaying to the strains of William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag as it wandered toward a well-deserved, peaceful and timeless rest. 

William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YufmYPb2zZE