Baggage

“We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”  ― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull


We all come with the trappings of our past. Ex-spouses, children, bad habits, emotional scars. We choose to let it become baggage but clinging to it. There's comfort in what you know, but with that comfort comes pain. Past experiences as kids form us into the adults we become, full of fear and distance. We allow the lessons to color our future, while all along we have the power to take those crayons from the teachers and break them in half. 

We create our own heavens. And our own hells. Sometimes we drag ourselves back into them, when we've taken a few blows and are feeling vulnerable. Misery loves company, and wallowing in the past that we allowed gives us a ticket straight back to it. It's a constant fight to be positive, since being miserable is so easy. Learning how to be happy isn't something our families teach us. They just want us to survive to adulthood, where we're expected to figure things out on our own. There are no lessons in success: that seems to be OJT. 

Casting off the past is tiresome work. I've grown weary of arguing: my childhood had many wasted hours watching family fight over the stupidest things. I still try to avoid arguments, but when I am in one, look out. I have to have the last word. Bad habit. But I can't completely break it. That lesson hasn't been completed. I also am not good at second chances. I don't expect them, so I find it hard to give them. Never got a break in my life, so it's difficult to grant one.

Drop those lead weights, my readers. Much easier to fly without them...