Dump the Junk

When I left my home for my residency, I left with one trolley bag and a backpack. Two years later, we got married and came back with seven boxes. A few years later, when shifting from one part of the country to another, we had a truck full of household items. In 2020, while moving to Delhi, we had 100 boxes! Yesterday, when the truck left our house for the next destination, we had managed to bring it down to 39. A 60% reduction! We had managed to dump some junk!

As we went through this process, I was left wondering about the junk we accumulate as we journey through life. Not everything is junk. Much of what we carry along has stories, memories, and dreams linked to it. But definitely, some junk tags along, too!

 

But then, it's not just the material junk. We manage to accumulate emotional, mental (intellectual), and at times, spiritual junk too. Emotional baggage we refuse to dump, past traumas, experiences, fears, and failures that we hold on to. Ways of thinking—fixed ways of thinking and decision-making—unwillingness to learn new things and move ahead. We keep going back to yesterday’s learnings to live today, without realizing that the world has moved far ahead! The spiritual junk consists of guilt, the inability to forgive (let alone forget), and similar burdens.

 

I wonder—what if I had learned to dump junk every season of life? Some well-meaning senior friends in my youth told me, “Learn to live a simple, contented life!” But back then, I considered them people who weren’t living in the reality of today.

 

Like Sarabi in the movie 'Mufasa' said contemptuously, “You expect us to follow this hallucinating baboon?” I considered them irrelevant to the context of the world then.

Today, I seem to be a bit wiser. Junk, if identified, should be dumped—that is what I believe now. The challenge is that sometimes, I don't know how to differentiate between junk and what is truly valuable.

 

The problem with holding on to junk is that it begins to corrupt us. Remember Scar in ‘The Lion King’? His original name was Taka. But he takes on the name Scar to remind himself of the wrong he has done. That name corrupts his character, and he surrounds himself with a similar crowd, too: the hyenas/

"Taka: Mufasa, please forgive me.  

Zazu: You must banish him, sire.  

Mufasa: As long as I'm king, my brother will have a place here.  

Taka: Brother, I'm so...  

Mufasa: But I won't ever say your name again. I can't. I won't.  

Taka: Then call me Scar. So I will never forget what I have done.  

Mufasa: Scar.  

Taka: [He bows and leaves.] Your Majesty."

And like Rafiki said, “Sometimes, when the people most like you don’t love you, it is a hurt that can cause the greatest pain—and this pain can lead you to hate everything.” Scar became like that because “The eye never forgets what the heart has seen.” And he carried the scar in his heart throughout life! 

I wonder what would have happened if he had continued to use his original name and his status as a King's son. 

I need to remember my original and true name and “Dump the Junk Daily”. Dump the Junk should be my slogan for life!