Baggage

I have too much stuff. It’s embarrassing how many boxes of clothes I carted down the stairs last night. I have too many dishes, too many books. I have boxes of paper that probably don’t mean anything anymore… too many socks, too many scarves, too many pairs of underwear. I don’t have time to have a garage sale, or even enough time to sort things into bags for goodwill, so it all goes into storage for now.

What I’m looking forward to is living out of a suitcase for the next few months. Having limited choices means I’ll spend limited time deciding what to wear. Everything I pack fits, works together and can be washed in the same load of laundry. I’ll be away from my comfortable surroundings… all the knick-knacks and tchotchkies that have meaning to me, which means I’ll be stimulated by new surroundings.

It’s a practice in temporary detachment. I don’t have to go through the process of divorcing myself from things I’ve spent acquiring. Instead I can detach myself from possessions that I think have meaning. When I return, I’ll be less attached.

Living with less baggage is freeing. You can still be yourself. You can be content. You can be in the moment.

What kind of baggage do you bring with you on a trip? What about to your interactions? What about to the dance floor? How must stuff are you carrying around in your mind, in your heart, about who you are, how good you are, what’s wrong with you? How many broken pieces of your past haven’t you let go of yet?

Find something to detach from. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as moving out of your house for five months. You can detach from a few boxes of junk, from an email habit, from a food that you know isn’t that good for you, from a toxic relationship, from a website that eats up your time, from a TV habit, or your cell phone. Temporary detachment is a nice way to start. Just put down the thing for few hours each day, for a few days or a week. See how you feel about it when that time frame is up. You didn’t really need that thing to survive did you?