‘Are you carrying more baggage Than luggage?’
“Anything you can’t control is teaching you how to let go.” (Jackson Kiddard)
Most of us travel through life carrying more baggage than luggage. Not the suitcases and the carry-on. The invisible kind. The old hurts, the grudges, the regrets, the fears, and the tired old voices that once told us we weren’t enough. We packed it all long ago, we carry it everywhere we go, and we almost never set it down.
And here is the strange thing about baggage like that. Unlike a heavy suitcase, we stop noticing the weight of it. We have carried it so long that it simply feels like part of us, like how life is, like who we are. It is not. It is just baggage we never learned to put down.
The Weight We Stop Noticing
In my book I describe what it feels like to live in ‘The Tip,’ the cluttered dumping ground of the mind, and it feels a lot like carrying a heavy weight on your shoulders. We even have the phrase for it: ‘Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.’ That weight is the baggage, the anxiety, the resentment, the anger, the loneliness, quietly loaded on and never taken off. And the more of it we carry, the heavier and slower every single day becomes, without us ever quite knowing why.
Why Are You Still Carrying Her?
There is a Zen parable I love and share in my book. Two monks reach a riverbank, where a young woman is struggling to cross. Monks had vowed never to touch a woman. One of them lifts her, carries her through the water, and gently sets her down on the far side. Hours later, the second monk is still troubled by it, and finally bursts out that monks are not meant to go near women, so why did he do it? The first monk answers simply, “I left the woman at the riverbank many hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
That is exactly what we do with our baggage. The thing itself happened once, at the riverbank, long ago. The hurt, the mistake, the betrayal, the loss. And then we pick it up and carry it, and re-carry it, day after day, year after year, long after the moment has passed. The event was a single crossing. The carrying is a choice we keep making without realising we are making it.
The Peanut in the Coconut
In my book I share another one that people never forget, ‘The monkey trap.’ Picture a monkey reaching into a hollowed-out coconut through a hole just big enough for its hand to fit in. Inside the coconut is a peanut. The monkey grabs the peanut tight, and now, with its fist closed around it, its hand will not fit back through the hole. The coconut is tied to a rope on a stake, and the monkey is trapped. No matter how hard it pulls, it cannot get free. Simply all it has to do to be free is open its hand and let go of the peanut.
We are so often that monkey. We hold tight to a grudge, a fear, an old story about ourselves, and it traps us, and the whole-time freedom is one open hand away. It is worth asking, gently, the question I ask in the book: ‘How many peanuts are you holding onto? And what do you actually gain by keeping your fist closed around them?
Recyclable, or Unrecyclable
Letting go does not mean pretending it never happened, and it does not mean every bag simply vanishes. In the book I talk about the difference between what is recyclable and what is unrecyclable. Some baggage is recyclable: we can process it, learn what it came to teach us, and set it down for good. Other things, a deep loss, something that truly cannot be changed, are unrecyclable, and there the work is acceptance rather than force, learning to carry them differently and gently, rather than being crushed under them. Either way, the aim is the same, to travel toward ‘The Garden’ lighter than you arrived.
Travel Lighter
You do not have to unpack a whole lifetime of baggage today. No one can, set down one bag, open your hand around one peanut. You leave one thing at the riverbank where it always belonged. It is your choice, every single time, and each bag you set down makes the next part of your life lighter.
A Question to Sit With
This week, take an honest look at what you have been carrying, and ask yourself:
‘What am I still carrying that I could finally set down at the riverbank?’
Pick one. Open your hand. And notice how much lighter the road feels the moment you do. You were never meant to carry it all the whole way.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? → https://getbook.at/WhereDoOurMindsGo