My life must fit in two suitcases. That’s how I can describe all the things around me at the moment.
Those are the two free checked in bags that I am allowed at this airline, which is one of the reasons I chose it. Two checked in bags with an allowed limit of 50 lbs.
That actually isn’t much if you consider you have to fit in everything you ever possessed and loved - it can be harder than you can think. No worries – I got this. Been there, done that got the t-shirt, many, many times.
It’s just that you start to gain roots in little places and the uprooting always turns out to be painful.
I try to prioritize things like this – first are the gifts I receive from people, second are the things that I love and third are clothes.
The letters, the postcards, the ticket stubs – they have a meaning to me and I have accumulated a lot of it but I can’t give them up.
Someone made a calendar for me. Handwritten with beautiful notes from friends that spanned a whole year.
That year is coming to an end and it is breaking my heart. The first time I travelled abroad, I left it behind. Then my dad, the superhero brought it with him – of all the things he could bring for me in a foreign country, and I treated it with gentleness.
It adorned a special place in my apartment window – the one with walls as windows.
I remember sleeping in one of the most beautiful places, on a high hill with the night sky and the lights of a city glaring before me. I felt the moon on a crisp night peeking into the largest windows spanning my entire apartment just as the snow flakes started falling.
I never closed the blinds at night for a long time.
See, I take care of my things very well. Clothes last me years. I have maintained the same figure that I had from my college and high school days and I am very careful about my things.
They are all high quality and I told myself since I transformed into a frequent traveller that I won’t buy anything unnecessary.
But the accumulation… it is so much. I accumulated so much love.
You never enter a place and leave it the same. The memorabilia is for my children, if I ever have any or maybe to give someone when I die.
Still, I have to leave some things behind. It’s no longer places. There are things and even more, it is people.
I say, ‘I’ll be back and I will see you again.’ I add a I hope to in my mind because let’s face it – none of us can ever boast that we will see each other again, today or tomorrow.
So now I have to let go of the weight of some of that accumulation. And that is life in general. You have to say goodbye – and it means people.
The people that no longer have value in our lives must be cut off. At one point in my life, I thought I was gaining emotional strength from some of these people, but I realized those were just words. They were the worst kind – the ones that are empty and have no meaning.
At that time, I didn’t know because I never really experienced the kind of true love, help, support and kindness that God had provided for me through amazing people in my life. I had to learn the difference.
Part of me is angered that I allowed such things in my life. I wasted my space (in my brain) and my time on people who were not deserving of it. What angers me is that these people, who have barely any meaningful quantifiable contribution to my life suddenly want to have a stake in it – to be able to control my thoughts and my perceptions.
So in the journey of life too, take only the people you need – the pillars, the strength, the mirrors of truth. Build your memorabilia. Build your network.
Yet the excess baggage of people must be discarded. The price of them is way too costly for you to fly to the heights you need.
Right now though, when I close my eyes I see the most beautiful view I have seen in my life.
Outside my window, there were clouds descending in a beautiful shade of pink in the morning, trees in arrays of colors, double rainbows across the whole horizon and a clock tower reminding me of where I was...and who I have become.
It belonged to me and it always will.
I had to let go of those precious, beautiful things physically but their impressions are etched in my heart.
I know there will be more lovely things in the future, but for now I am going to enjoy my precious accumulation.
