Whats in your rucksack

In the past 2 weeks, I have asked 3 friends this title question - which is quite a hike from my yearly average of 2.

Both my parents are mental hygienists - making my interest in the subject rather inevitable. My mother works most often with images: metaphors, schemas, analogies to employ within one’s life to create confidence and awareness.

Coincidentally, one of my favourites is “Whats in your rucksack?”.

The rucksack of course is conceptual and not referring to my every-day-carry setup. Rather, the question is a visual way to ask: what do you carry with you on an every day basis - and - how are you prepared to handle the expected/unexpected?

For example, my rucksack has a breathing exercise (4-7-8, if you know you know), a journal, a sense of humour, and phone numbers of people who care. My rucksack also holds my values, beliefs, and particular memories of success that I cherrypick to make me feel better - as well as anxieties.

… But why not just ask the questions above? Why overcomplicate “whats on your mind”? Metaphors are not dissimilar to ‘top 10 mental health techniques’ in what they aim to achieve, but to me they offer avenues of exploration beyond what ‘cognitive restructuring’ could ever do.

Metaphors are more real than you think

As I mentioned above, I’ve yet to master the evasion of anxieties. Almost any day I think I have a few tucked into my pockets, saving them to make sure any day can be a rainy day.

One Autumn day when I was back home in Hungary - I was struck with a visceral anxiety of not knowing whats coming next for me. Career-wise, that is. Apologies for the scare.

I remember the fog was thick in the valley and I woke up home alone in my childhood bedroom. I could not recall dreams but I certainly hadn’t slept well. My throat felt twisted in realisation of what thoughts I had been escaping in my attempt to fall asleep.

After uncountable moments passed, I found silence for long enough to stop - and I checked inside my rucksack for what I had packed for such a predicament.

Breathing exercises, writing… No, no, no, there had to be something stronger in here - I thought as my unpacking of the metaphorical satchel became more hectic.

Before long I’d laid it all out in front of me - nope. No cure for me. I turned my gaze back to the rucksack with whimsy hope of discovering a secret pocket.

But this time it didn’t look empty - it looked spacious. Much like how I imagine the first caveman felt upon discovering fire, I too experienced the rapid expansion of my hippocampus in real-time: I was going to pack up all of my anxieties, take it out into the middle of the forest, and dump it all there. Genius.

So I did just that - and lo - a ritual was born. Not quite a tool in my rucksack, but rather a scouts badge on the outside of it proclaiming my achievement of “anxiety dumping” - its novelty still glistens proudly on the outside of my wayward pouch.

”Life is a box of chocolate - but mine isn’t”

Like echoes of the zeitgeist - metaphors are more than literature. They aren’t just a way to reveal our worlds to others; they are how we perceive and engage with the world, like extra limbs or a special eye that only sees good things.

My backpack was empty. So I filled it up with what I didn’t want to keep carrying with me and I released it into the wild, like a captive bird. Hopefully it doesn’t go burden another hiker passing by…

And there’s so many other uses for the rucksack - like collecting “cool rocks”, which is actually a metaphor in itself for meaningful facts and experiences to share with others whom may also acknowledge your rock as a “certified cool rock”. Those are the people who become your best friend on the playground.

I believe there is immense value in mental health/well-being/hygiene (pick your poison) techniques, such as meditation, mindfulness, and reframing exercises… But I also feel that they are not a part of me. They are static templates to apply like a stencil. I believe the visualisations or metaphors are alive and evolving.

I attest to their importance by my very experience of 10s of metaphors I use daily to navigate my way around my world. I would like to write about more of these - to share my toys with the other kids in the playground.

🔌 The platform tells me that I labelled my newsletter as ‘technology & culture’, so I will have to plug my work at the end. During the day, I research how technology might be a medium for metaphors and toys for personal life - so that you really could have a rucksack and feel prepared. At the moment I’m working on Amulet, a social journalling app, which you can read more about here.

So, if you liked reading it - lets grab a metaphorical coffee - and let me know:

Whats in your rucksack?