No Matter Where You Go, You Can't Really Lose Your Baggage

When you travel, sometimes your bags get lost. However, no matter where you go, you can’t really lose your baggage — by which I mean your “stuff,” your issues. You can move, you can go away for a period of time, you can rearrange furniture, you can change your hairstyle and your wardrobe, but no matter where you go or who you try to “look” like, you’ll always find your baggage right at your feet. More specifically, it’s handle is probably clutched in your hand.

I realized this while spending seven weeks away from my home in the beautiful and quiet Santa Cruz Mountains of California and in the crowded, noisy not-always-so-pretty New York City. Most of the time, I still struggled with the same issues. I had at home. It seemed the only difference was that some of those issues didn’t confront me as often, because they didn’t get triggered by my current situation in Manhattan. And when I returned home, guess what? Those issues returned immediately to join all the others. I hadn’t left any baggage behind when I left for New York, nor had my baggage  gotten lost at the airport or been left in  my New York apartment when I returned home.

The only way to really lose your baggage involves opening the bags and confronting the issues they contain. You have to honestly look at them — and yourself — and them you have to actually make some changes — personal changes, big changes, hard changes. You have to look at yourself and decide what you need to change. You have to begin working on yourself. Self improvement isn’t always easy, but it’s the only way to rid yourself of baggage. To achieve personal growth, you have to lighten your load by reducing your issues.

Coming back home, I’m much clearer about what issues live in my bags. It will take some courage on my part to face those issues, to deal with them, to move through them, but I will. Maybe being away for awhile actually makes it easier to see your own issues. You may not be able to lose your baggage by leaving for a while, but you’ll see your bags and what’s in them more clearly upon returning.

So, what baggage do you want to lose and are you willing to open those bags and face your issues? Or will you simply continue trying to lose your bags? I promise you, they’ll keep showing up in unexpected places and at inopportune times if you do so. Instead, take the time now to acknowledge your baggage — accept your issues — and then begin working on resolving and changing them. (You won’t be alone in the process, I promise!) In this way, you might actually succeed in losing them!