Opinion: Full Capacity – From the Bag to the Interior

Remember that bag you used to carry on your back, filled with books, notebooks, and pens, along with a sandwich your mother had prepared for you and a juice whose ingredients you didn’t know, except that its taste was sweet. Your day would pass, work would end, and you’d return home with it, no lighter than when you left in the morning. We grew up, but we never stopped carrying bags. Only their shape changed. We began seeking ownership to feel full. We possess degrees: primary, then university, then postgraduate. We possess jobs, marriage, and children. We strive to own a home, wealth, reputation, and position. And this fullness is always a deferred promise, one we believe awaits us at the next milestone. But we don’t stop there; we also possess invisible things: admiration, acceptance, and approving glances from others. We shine not because we want to, but because we fear losing our place. We excel, please, and maintain good impressions to preserve relationships, so that others don’t withdraw the look that makes us feel we are “enough.” In psychology, this is not considered weakness, but a need. Maslow places it among the needs for belonging and esteem, where humans strive to be accepted, loved, and recognized. Carl Rogers argues that a person may develop according to “conditional acceptance,” learning to be loved only when they conform to what others desire. Attachment theory, meanwhile, tells us that our pursuit of acceptance is merely an extension of the child within us, who once sought safety in the approving gaze of a caregiver. But when was the last time we asked ourselves: Have we truly been filled? The bag remains full, yet the feeling of lightness has not arrived. Because true fullness was never about what we carry, but about what we no longer need to carry. It is to drop the bag and remain standing without feeling deficient. It is to return to yourself and calmly ask: What does my soul truly need? Not to add more weight, but to give it what nourishes it from within. For the soul is not filled by external provisions, but by what it cultivates within itself. When you become occupied with tending your inner garden, tranquility grows without noise, and things come to you not because you chased them, but because you no longer need them to feel complete. See yourself apart from everything you own, and silently realize that you are enough, even without all of this. Inner contentment and unshakable self-acceptance. Be full, so that those who are full may draw near to you. By Badriya Al-Mubarak