I recently ended a relationship. It was a difficult decision, and one I didn’t take lightly. In fact I pondered this decision for weeks before I finally came to the conclusion that I was making the right choice. After all, I had been in this relationship for about 20 years, but I firmly believe that all relationships have an expiration date, and the time had come to end this one….after 20 years I finally bought a new lunch bag.
My old lunch bag wasn’t even a bag at all, and in the end that was part of the problem. It was a small red and white cooler and although it still did all the things I needed it to do, I had grown tired of it. The spark was gone, I no longer felt the thrill or excitement that I once did when I carried it back and forth to work. Sure it had served me well all these years, it had kept my water cold even on the hottest days and it was the perfect size for my thermos of soup on the coldest of days, and it held everything I needed for my lunch, my sandwich and snacks, my yogurt and fruit. I would even throw all my other stuff in there, like my car keys, my hand sanitizer and of course my face mask, and that became part of the problem….I was forever rummaging around looking for the one thing I needed. My hand sanitizer was under a bottle of water, the snack I wanted was under my sandwich and somehow at the end of the day I could never find my car keys even though by then my cooler was almost empty.
I also started noticing it didn’t look the same after all these years, it was starting to show it’s age. Although I cleaned the inside and outside every week, it still looked dirty and scuffed up. I started noticing other people looking at it funny and making comments like…..
“why are you still with that cooler ?”…..and
“you know, you can do better than that cooler, just move on”
Of course they were right, I just needed to move on, make a clean break and start with a newer, better looking lunch container.
I found myself wandering down the aisle at the store that had all the lunch containers. I noticed they had really come a long way, most of them weren’t even coolers at all, they were lunch bags that were also coolers. At first I was just curious about them….I wasn’t even sure I would get a new one, I just liked looking at them. Every time I would go to the store I would find myself in the lunch bag aisle….I started taking them off the shelf and feeling them. I noticed the differences between them and compared them to each other.
“oh this one has 4 pockets and water bottle holders on each side, but this one has straps to carry it like a backpack, and this one has WHEELS….WHEELS for gods sake to roll it around”….
although I couldn’t imagine any circumstance I would need to roll my lunch bag around it was a pretty nifty feature.
I noticed the different colors and sizes, the zippers and pockets. I started making excuses to go to the store just to look at them. I would imagine carrying my lunch bag into work and proudly showing it off to my co-workers, showing them all the cool features and them being jealous. I also would imagine taking my new bag other places, places I hadn’t taken my old one to in a long time, like to the beach on a hot summers day, or on a hike through the woods or maybe on a moonlit stroll on a starry night, just because.
In the end, it really wasn’t a hard decision, it was time to move on. My old cooler and I had a long run together, and it was great, but everything ends and when it does, it doesn’t diminish what once had been.
So I bought the lunch bag with the backpack straps, the multi-pockets and the water bottle holders on both sides. My old cooler is sitting out in the garage….I keep thinking that maybe someday I’ll use it for something else, but I probably won’t….more likely it’ll get taken to the curb on trash day. Relationships end and time marches on…and now I just have to remember which pocket in my new bag I put my car keys.
Be Kind and Take Care,
John
John's Blog 