the burden of the unnecessary

Waiting for a friend in a restaurant, I watched another guest came through the door.  Bulging gym bag, open briefcase with papers sprouting out of it, hat, overcoat and umbrella (it wasn't raining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky).

Smiling, the host reached for the man's gear. "May I take...?" Brusquely, the burdened guest said, "No, I want to keep it all."

How many times I have said this? "No, I want to keep it all." Said differently, “Yes, I think I can do it all.”

I watched this guy wend his way through tables, attractively garbed, but heavily laden. He narrowly missed whacking another guest upside the head with his bag; he wrestled his umbrella under the chair and draped his coat and hat over the back of his chair. The server looked a little bewildered. "Sir, can I check any of this for you?" The man sat down immediately and pulled out his phone. He looked up. "No, I want to keep it all."

Robert Frost's poem, Armful, came to mind.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize,

I lose some other off my arms and knees,

And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns-

Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,

Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.

With all I have to hold with hand and mind

And heart, if need be, I will do my best

To keep their building balanced at my breast.

I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;

Then sit down in the middle of them all.

I had to drop the armful in the road

And try to stack them in a better load.

Keeping it all is such hard work, isn't it? What if we set some of it down?