In a Barrel

What can you put in a barrel to make a barrel lighter?

(Answer at the end. It’s not helium.)

When you want something and then you get it, it can have a tendency to be bigger in your life than you anticipated. “When it rains, it pours” and all that. It’s not uncommon to get more than you bargained for, because we don’t often fully realize the conceptual space something is going to take up in our lives.

We need to poke some breathing holes, so to speak. If you get a dog and you’ve never owned one before, you can be in for a rude awakening. The pup takes up more physical space than you anticipated, costs more to take care of and replace what gets damaged, requires more of your time and energy than you thought, etc. It’s just bigger. If you don’t give yourself a little space it can overwhelm you – you need to poke some breathing holes in that box, so to speak. Maybe that’s a dog-walking service you hire. Maybe it’s splitting bulk food orders with fellow dog-owners. But somehow, you need to carve out space for the life you want to keep.

That’s what you can put in a barrel to make the barrel lighter – a hole.