I have a trip coming up in a couple of weeks and was thinking about how to best pack for it. I'll be in two different countries with very different activities and will only carry a backpack, so I get to be selective about what to bring. While thinking about it, I realized this is exactly how life is! We get to choose what and who we want to keep in our lives, we decide what makes our journeys lighter and easier, and we get to leave behind anything and everything that weighs down our quote, unquote, baggage.
Since I’ve been on literally hundreds of trips in my lifetime, I’ve become somewhat of a pro at packing (yes, to toot my own horn;). Some people spend a week to shop, lay everything out, add and remove items for days, and that gives me total anxiety just thinking about it! I know exactly what I need to bring whether it be the mountains, the city, or the beach, and it takes me under an hour to throw what I need together, pack it neatly in a bag, leaving space to bring things home.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about things in my life that don’t serve me. Habits I have that don’t fuel me forward, people in my life that aren’t helping me thrive, thought patterns I have or actions I take that stunt my growth, and all the other things in my life I get to let go.
One area of my life that I get to let go is doubting myself. I get to believe that all of the choices I've made in life, good or bad, have been the right ones. My idea of living, of how life can be lived, does not always make sense to nor fit into the practical ideas of how others think we or I should live, and that is OK!
For as long as I can remember I’ve not fit the mold of how a lot of people feel life should be lived: graduate college, get a comfortable job, get married, buy a house, have kids, retire, travel, rest in peace. Boy, did I get that formula all wrong. But I'm here, I'm alive, I'm happy, I've lived fully, I've got big things in front of me, so my path has to be the right one!
When I was younger I was certain I’d be married at 25, kids at 30, living with my husband in a beautiful home and that would be my happy little life. Well folks, life happened and this was not at all how things have turned out leading up to today. I've traveled, loved, learned, broken, healed, fallen, grown, and most importantly, I've been living my life the best way I know how.
I haven’t been married, but was in relationships from the age of 17 up until a few years ago. I’ve had beautiful, loving, long-lasting relationships with some amazing men, and have been able to travel the world together with a few of them. I’ve also had a couple of chaotic and unfulfilling relationships, where we had a lot of fun, but our core values did not match up. And now, I’ve been single the better part of the 3.5 years living back in Minnesota, forcing me to be in and work on the relationship with myself, which I am so very grateful for!
These relationships, these beautiful and chaotic and magical and heartbreaking times of my life, are all baggage. These are experiences, times in my life that have impacted me as a woman, and the beauty of choice is that I get to choose what and who to bring with me, and what and who to leave behind.
I was recently introduced to the word Samskara. It is a word meaning scars. The emotional scars we have and the baggage we carry in our hearts. Samskaras may be both positive and negative experiences, times we have felt love or times we have felt fear and pain, and if we do not let go of experiences whether good or bad, they will cause our hearts to be blocked, to close, to not allow new things meant for us into our lives.
When first reading about the idea behind Samskaras, I could not wrap my head around how reminiscing about good memories and amazing times in my life could possibly block my heart. If something good happened, if a time in my life was pure and beautiful, then how could holding on to those times be bad for my growth? And then I realized I can’t choose to allow only the good to stay while letting the bad go. Energy is energy, and to allow our hearts to remain open, full of love and ready for what’s next, we need to allow all experiences to pass through. To let both the bad and the good come, and also let them go, with grace. This is how our hearts remain open for what is next in our lives. This is literally the key to happiness! Allow in everything, hold on to nothing, and let all pass through.
Buying a ticket to a destination is like choosing our journey in life. When we choose where we are headed next, then we are able to determine what we will bring with us, and what we will leave behind. Sometimes packing is tough! We want to take ALL the dresses to be ready for fun nights out and spontaneity on our journey, and if we bring all our electronics and comforts with, then we are 100% prepared for things to go wrong. Yet I feel the opposite is true: the less we pack, the more space we allow, the more we surrender to the unexpected, this is how we keep ourselves open to the exciting and unknown: by keeping our baggage as light as possible. We leave space for the new dress we didn't know we would find on our journey.
To be clear, I do not mean leave your partner behind just to see who else is out there. In fact, I abhor the idea of "you don't bring sand to the beach." Traveling with a lover is one of the best ways to travel! We get to experience it all together, through our own and each other‘s eyes, and can talk and laugh about the memories later on in life. I'm talking about experiences, meeting new people and allowing in moments we didn't know existed, whether that's with or without someone you love.
My thought is that when we carry nothing with us, when we leave both the good and bad behind, it is then that we are prepared for everything. This is how our hearts stay open, this is how to pack a bag for the next adventure, to bring only the essentials, the things that are light and will make your journey easier.
This is also how we decide what to pack in our own baggage in life. Be grateful for the good, be grateful for the bad, yet we must bid adieu to the past whether it was a time of highs or a time of lows, to leave space for what is next for us. You’ve got your whole future ahead of you and nothing, I mean nothing you left, or that left you in the past needs to come with you.
Godspeed!
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