Journal Entry: The Things They Carried

Journal Entry 2
The short story, “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’brien, was my favorite reading of this week. The author states what the company is carrying, as well as emotional burdens that they carry. I think that theme of this story can be summarized as “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. As I stated in the discussion, I think this story makes a profound point about trauma and emotional stress. Physical burdens are easily observable. For example, when people see someone in a wheelchair their thoughts are most likely automatically sympathetic. However, when people see someone having a panic attack they might just assume that the person is overreacting. Nobody knows what emotional burdens someone holds. Therefore, it is wrong to judge people on appearance alone and assume that one knows the full story.
I found this story relatable, especially because my boyfriend is in the army.
He talks a lot about what his company has to carry in their rucksacks and he loves describing the functions of their tactical weapons. However, sometimes he says things that really show the emotional stress that being in the army can have on people. For example, he called me crying one time, while he was at an army training in California. The emotional stress of being away from family, on top of the physical stress from training, was weighing down on him. I asked him what the worst part of training was, fully expecting the answer to be something like “having to do a ton of push-ups all the time”. On the contrary, his answer was that the emotional toll of having to be away from home and your loved ones was the
hardest.
This story also made me think about the burdens that I carry and the differences in how they are perceived. Physical burdens receive much more sympathy because they are readily observable. Mental and emotional burdens rarely receive any attention. For example, I have generalized anxiety disorder. This invisible burden weighs down on me, but not a lot of people know about it. Oftentimes, people think that I am being rude because I am too anxious to approach them. They do not know about the emotional baggage that I carry, which means that their perception of me is incomplete. This incomplete perception can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. However, physical burdens that I have had received much more sympathy. For example, over a year ago, I got into a car accident and had extremely bad whiplash as a result. Everybody was sympathetic about my physical injuries and were more than willing to accommodate them. However, nobody seemed to want to accommodate my driving anxiety. I was even told that I needed to “get over it” multiple times. People could relate to and sympathize with my physical pain, since they had felt physical pain before. However, they did not have anxiety, so they could not relate to the emotional stress that I was feeling.