Ruminations on Baggage
The more and more I expose myself to people from all walks of life, the more I realize… almost everyone tries to offload their baggage onto anyone who will listen.
Look, EVERYONE has baggage. Those who say they don’t, are lying.
It’s not that you have baggage, or don’t have baggage, or have less or more than anyone else… it’s all in how you “pack” that baggage. I’m not talking about the kind the TSA cares about, I’m talking about emotional, social and financial baggage you carry with you every hour of every day.
But it is a lot like the kind of baggage you take with you on a flight. Let me explain:
Bad Baggage
If you fly, you know the type. They come bounding down the aisle with a roller that’s too wide for the row, banging into everyone’s elbows, knocking things over, causing a ruckus. They get to their seat, which is inevitably against the window.
They try to jam the handle of their luggage down, case bulging at the seams, and then try to fit it into the overhead. Naturally, it’s too wide, tall, over-stuffed or whatever. It won’t fit.
They try to take some stuff out, move things around, move other people’s luggage around, just to accommodate their own in the space.
They “affect” everyone else around them with their own baggage. Their problems become everyone else’s problems.
This is an example of “bad baggage”.
Good Baggage
Sleek, well-dressed, and gliding their custom, European-designed luggage down the aisle.. they get to their seat, they collapse the handle of their bag, and they stash it in the overhead, where it fits perfectly in the space allotted.
They sit down, and become part of the background of the other activity on the plane and you barely notice them at all. They’ve packed the right amount of luggage, they know how to pack it well, where it fits and how to store it away.
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I’ve met so many people lately that just affect (or infect?) everyone around them with their own personal baggage. They have so much, they burden other people around them with helping them carry it. It drains my energy and drags me down, like dragging a parachute behind that plane of luggage.
In a word, don’t be that person who can’t pack their own emotional bags and has to make everyone notice them when they can’t help but spill it all out on the rest of the world.