Knapsack

I thought of a pretty decent analogy the other night, but it was like two in the AM, I was kind of drunk still, and I had work at 8 AM the next day. Needless to say I didn't flesh it out then. Why not take some time out of my busy schedule working here at my desk in Jessup Hall to write a blog? It began with me thinking about how I felt I hadn't kept up with my friends from my hometown well enough, or even people I have just met along the way for that matter. That led me to the saying my parents always told me, "Don't burn bridges because you may need to cross them again someday."
So there's friends you had in the past that you hold on to and stay in touch with and theres ones you kind of forget about but rarely is there a friends in the past, at least for me, that you intentionally torched the connection to. So really the phrase shouldn't be so much about not burning bridges, but constantly working to repair them. Here's where I get to my brilliant analogy. Life, of course, is like a journey into the wilderness. The keen and prepared wilderness explorer brings supplies with him so that the journey is slightly less difficult. Nobody wants to be like Bear Grylls stuck in the wilderness with nothing to get them by, so you bring your knapsack. Well in this analogy the knapsack is like the people and friends you have in life. You can carry a light knapsack, and dump supplies out after you think you are done with them. I already built the rope bridge, don't really need that rope anymore, lets just ditch it and keep going. Or you can think ahead, spend some time untying and rerolling the rope and keep it with you for the journey. It's like people you meet. I can think, "this was a fun dude to hang out with while I was in highschool, but heck I'm in college now, don't need him anymore." or the alternative is, I can recognize what type of valuable person he is, spend some time to keep him in my knapsack and keep on trekkin'. Of course, his extra weight in the knapsack is worth it if in the future you find out you need him, have to backtrack and fix any damage in order to get him back in your sack. The thing is, along the way, if you keep everyone that you meet in your knapsack, that thing is going to be a bitch to carry, and all those people are going to feel pretty cramped in there. So we have to carefully pick and choose who is most important to us to keep along our journey and we have to analyze our strength to correctly gauge how many people we can carry along with us. You have to decide if you are strong enough to drag an immense load with you through the forest or if you would prefer a lighter load and some more puzzling troubles along the way.

I am going to edit my phrase, and possibly edit again later, but for now, lets change it to, "Don't empty your knapsack too soon, you might need that rope later."

also this may sound like I view other people as to be used, and in a way I do. But I use the term use very loosely in the sense that a person providing quality friendship is in a way being used, but it's a reciprocal thing and in no way bad.