Up in the Air, the latest George Clooney film currently showing in theaters, is contemporary, deeply introspective, and at its bottom-most line, highly disturbing.  If you don’t like a mirror being held up to your life, I’d suggest you skip this flick as well as this article — which is not a review of the movie.  If you’re ready to rethink and possibly retool key aspects of your life, if you’re open to empowerment and potential bliss, even in this dog-eat-dog economy and oh so graceless age, read on.

The premise around which Clooney’s character conducted successful seminars as well as his very life, revolved around a literal representation of as well as a metaphor for a simple backpack.  Facing an audience with an empty backpack, he asked his listeners to think of that bag as their life, and then to begin to fill up the pack with everything cluttering their lives.  “Start small,” he’d advised, “with those things on your shelves and in your drawers.  Then start adding the big stuff: your furniture, your big-screen TV, your house and mortgage, your car and its bank note.  Is the pack getting heavy?  Now start to fill it up with all of the relationships in your life.  How on Earth are you going to carry that backpack?  But, somehow, you do!”   The inference was, of course, that if we were forced to pare down our lives to the barest essentials, what and whom would we leave behind?

If you choose to enter into this mind game with your own psyche, nobody’s keeping score.  Nobody’s keeping tabs on you.  You and you alone will know the outcome.  If you’re brave enough to go through with this gut wrenching and ultimately cleansing exercise, I guarantee that if you’ve not done something like this before, you’ll emerge stronger and wiser than before.  Remember: strength and wisdom = power (yes, even in this age of $710 billion bailouts and more).

When I put myself through Clooney’s exercise, I was very surprised to find that who and what were in my backpack represented pretty much the same things that were in there when I was twenty years old (which, hint, was a while ago).  When I was twenty, my family was forced to sell the house in which I’d been born and grown up.  We went from seven large rooms, a full basement, and small front and back yards bursting with flowers and shrubs, herbs and a luscious fig tree, squirrels and stray cats and all manner of birds, to four and a half rooms and no yards, miles from my childhood home.  Thus, I had to toss out a lot of stuff.

I was the first one in my family to be packed, and the first one to move into our new, considerably smaller apartment.  I took those things that I’d cherished most in my life: the artwork I’d created, my music, my stereo and speakers, and my beloved books.  I also took my sweet-natured gerbil, George, whom to I’d negotiated (not easily) to keep, via the rodent-fearing landlady, who lived in the apartment below.  Commanded to only take the meat of my young life, those were the things I determined that I must have so as to keep some sanctity and sanity in my life.

Years later, I found myself mulling over Clooney’s character’s proposal.  Into my backpack would go, yes, my music.  I’d have to give up most of the tapes, CD’s, and old LP’s and their resultant cover art and liner notes, to load everything onto my Ipod. Well, maybe not those old, dog-eared albums, particularly JT’s brilliant, poignant platter featuring Fire and Rain and Sweet Baby James, and not Blind Faith’s one and only self-titled outing.  Come hell or high water, I’d keep my two gorgeous, angelic kitties. I might keep all of the artwork; I am especially fond of a portrait I’d sketched of Bowie from his Young Americans album.  As for the reading material, I’d give a lot away.  For sure, I’d keep Ray Bradbury’s mid-career titles, including The Illustrated Man anthology, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked this Way Comes.  Additional keepers include Thoreau’s double-header, Walden and Civil Disobedience, and Joyce Carey’s The Horse’s Mouth, alternately the funniest and the saddest book I’ve ever read.

As for my collection of now-ancient, irreplaceable, and still beautiful music magazines, I’d keep a few and put the rest into storage, for I’ve already given away what I’ve considered to be the gems of that collection to a certain musician.  He seems to have appreciated them more than anyone else of my bloodline or acquaintance, and for this, I am deeply grateful, for I daresay they have found the most excellent home in his heart.

And in that last statement of mine lives the crux of the people I would, and the people I would not, insert into my backpack.  Concerning those “keepers”:

• We are not all connected by blood or marriage, and only one is connected by a decades-long friendship.
• We do not all live in the same State or even the same nation.
• We none of us work together, at least as far as weekly paychecks go.
• We don’t all worship God in the same way.
• Some are much younger than me; some are considerably older.
• We are from different races and ethnic groups but somehow, we are all sisters and brothers under the skin.

I won’t name names and I won’t count heads.  The only things I count, as far as this list goes, are my blessings.  What I’ve learned about my “humans list” may help someone reading this article.

A few years ago, I had a little epiphany, heralded by Hurricane Dennis. In a matter of minutes, I lost half of my house: walls, floors, furniture, memorabilia, music, and the entire contents of my basement.  I had no insurance for such a farfetched potentiality, as I do not live in any of the areas normally plagued by hurricanes.  And, my husband was about to be downsized.  The people who came forward to help me during that bleak hour were not the people I’d expected to help me.  Some were, but most weren’t.

I had a few wonderful surprises.  I also had some truths that I’d been avoiding smack me upside the head.  Once I knew the truth, I began to discard people from my life.  I sloughed them off like clothing that no longer fit.  I’d done this once before during a crisis, and it felt good.  It felt right, as it had then; it was justified.

If you need to do this, consider that you do not have to stop talking to these people or even seeing them at certain gatherings, as that may not be entirely feasible.  But you can divorce yourself in your heart from them, so that they no longer have power over you.  You can stop living up to their expectations and live up to your own.  You can stop allowing them to hurt you, to take and take what you have so freely given, while never returning anything of value … and I don’t mean cash or a great dinner out or some beautiful material thing; I mean the stuff that really matters.

If you do excise these folks emotionally, you’ll be rather stunned, initially, at the reactions of these people, even if you have remained civil to them (remember, Jesus forgave those who hung him on the cross).  You’ll be told to wake up and smell the coffee, to get your head out of the clouds and to come back down to earth.  You’ll be told to act your age.  You’ll be warned about “what might happen” if you continue on your current course of manifesting self-love to those who assumed you never even deserved it!  Ignorant, deliberately hurtful, and plain dumb-ass statements will issue from the mouths of the jealous and the petty, from those who never really supported you and never intended to.

My advice is that if you wake up smelling that coffee, you’d better damn well have selected it and ground it and brewed it yourself.  Don’t leave what is most important to you on a shelf.  Place it with pride and tenderness, and even gusto, into your own backpack.  Don’t think that you’ll take that trip, see that concert, blow off that in-law function, rally for a good cause, open your mouth and be heard, go out of your way and put yourself on the line for what’s really right, or refuse to give in to the bloodsuckers in your midst at some unnamed date in the future.  As the Japanese say, “Tomorrow never comes.”  Be prepared to receive hatred and confusion, the cold shoulder, manipulative behavior, and guilt trips from those jealous of your newfound freedom.  Be prepared to be the butt of gossip, and oh yes, be prepared to be crucified.  Are these the people you really want weighing down your backpack?  Just because they give you negative energy, you do not have to accept it!

Once you’ve eliminated the human dross from your life, you’ll take a renewed look at your possessions, for you have already become a stronger person.  Like a diamond shot right between your eyes and embedded into your brain, your transformation will enable you to see, finally, with much greater clarity.  You will have the answers to questions that have plagued you for too long, questions that keep you up at night.  Questions such as:

• If I lose my job and lose my house, if I lose that 52″ TV that I saved for all last year despite the recession, what is the worst that will happen?
• Will I still be me?  Will I still retain my perspective, my core of personal joy and integrity and stamina, my base of knowledge and skills and wisdom that’s gotten me this far?
• Will I blame God or say “thanks” for the learning experience?
• Will I wind up on the street, in a shelter, or in a better place?  Will I convince my friends, who may be in the same boat, to pool our resources and live together in a mostly peaceable kingdom, with respect and love for one another?
• Will I truly share?  Will I open my heart to the select few who truly deserve it?
• Will I, if suddenly unemployed, see the opportunities instead of the lacking?
• Do I even remember my dreams and do I still wish to pursue them?  What will happen … what is the best and the worst that will happen … if I do take the plunge to pursue them?

Or will you look back on your life, in the here-and-now and finally, in your dotage, and wish that you had taken a chance, and taken a stand, when you were still emotionally and physically strong enough to do so?  Your answers will determine the contents and weight of your own personal backpack.  Pack it carefully!