Life, like certain airlines, charges heavily for all the useless baggage you choose to drag around

Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik

The media have been full of the extra charges certain airlines now make for transporting checked-in baggage — even a single piece. They want extra money to offset jet fuel prices, of course, but it will probably also focus people’s minds on whether they need to have all that ’stuff’ with them. If you’re anything like me, you always return from a trip with some things that you never used, however light you think you’ve packed.

It’s worth remembering that ‘excess baggage’ isn’t just a physical attribute of modern travel. We all carry heavy, unwanted baggage around with us, in the form of obsolete feelings, useless guilt, past hurts, ancient grudges and musty attitudes that have long ceased to serve any useful purpose — if they ever did.

Life charges us for all this; not just in terms of feeling hassled, anxious, and weighed down, but via the mistakes and messes we make because our minds are clogged by all the useless ’stuff’. It confuses us so we cannot see clearly what is needed right now.

We miss today’s opportunities while we are still dragging around some past hurt that we’ve never quite got over. We screw up new relationships, because we saddle them with concerns and fears from our past that have nothing whatsoever to do with this person, right now. We avoid something new and good because we can’t forget that time, long ago, when we took a risk and it didn’t work out.

Excess mental and emotional baggage

I’ve met people who cannot bear to throw anything away, however unnecessary. One time, when we were looking to buy a house, we viewed a property where the roof space, the garage, and the basement were piled high with boxes and bags. The owner saw us looking at one another in amazement, so she explained. She said that they contained all her children’s old books, toys and clothes, right back to the time they were born. Odd enough in itself, but the youngest was in his late teens and the others had left home long ago.

That’s how people’s minds get: every space becomes filled with past hurts, old failures, long-lost concerns and fears, right back to earliest childhood. Only these aren’t neatly packed up in bags and boxes — they’re alive and running around, still interfering in today’s actions and choices. The owners of all this mental ’stuff’ are lugging it along, still trying to sort it out and finally get their past problems right.

The cost of living in the past

People like this suffer because they can’t bear to prioritize or exclude anything from their past. There’s no present focus to what they do. Their lives include so many worn-out worries and attitudes, nothing else gets enough time or attention. As a result, they’re overwrought, stressed out and always on the run from one anxiety to another. They exist in a nightmare of guilt, remorse and pointless attempts to put the past right.

It’s so tempting to hang on to the past, hoping against hope that you’ll be able, one day, to correct your mistakes and salve your hurts. Yet taking along too much, not discriminating between what you can do and what you should, stops you from accomplishing what matters most today. Dragging all that baggage around is guaranteed to leave you frustrated and exhausted, unable to concentrate even on activities you enjoy and relish.

To be worth carrying along, anything from your past needs to have a significant and positive impact on what you now value most. Activities, attitudes, or beliefs with little impact should be eliminated. They are distractions and a waste of time — ignore them. Obsolete assumptions and needless fears should be set aside — you need to drop them. Past hurts and guilt over things you cannot change are of no use to you or anyone else — simply forget them; they’re no longer needed.

Leave all this useless baggage behind

Don’t carry this heavy stuff into your future. Don’t waste your energy on running over past hurts and worries again and again. Don’t let the past reach forward and pollute the future with its obsolete concerns. Above all, don’t pay for carrying around feelings and beliefs that no longer have any worth to you. The cost in wear and tear on your mind, body and emotions is far too high; the likelihood that you’ll mess up, because you’re distracted by something over and gone, way too great.

Imagine you are standing at the check-in desk for your ‘flight’ into the future. The clerk asks you if you have any baggage to check in. All around you, people are dragging up carts laden with piles of bags and cases, many of them clearly decades old. They’re going to pay more to take that baggage along than the price of the ticket, many times over. They’re carrying so much they can hardly move.

But you turn to the clerk and say: “Nothing, thanks. I decided from now on to take only what I will really need.”

Wouldn’t that be better?

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