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How I Manage My Baggage
Yesterday, when we were infants and children, our world, though different in technology, rules, statutes, fashion, economy etc., was not unlike today. Yesterday, today and tomorrow will forever be a learning experience. Our first teachers were our parents, siblings (if any) and any others who lived in our homes as we came onto the scene. We relied on them to shelter, nourish and keep us safe. We also seem to have picked up many of their habits, practice them to this day and unwittingly and still respond to triggers which bring us back to that time. After all, those were said to be our formative years. Fact of the matter is that, we continue to form changes as the years go by.
During our growth process, we often have strained relationships with our parents. Wondering why this was so in many families, I pondered on it arrived at my own explanation. Perhaps it is because we, the now adult children, were slowly becoming to our parents, the Keepers of their Consciences. After all, weren't we the ones who witnessed first hand all their parenting blunders? Today those blunders are the ones which line the layers of our adult baggage; they are the underlying reasons why we adversely react to certain triggers in our adult life. The blunders our parents made when they were young and raising their little ones, (Us) became the basic material (the lining) in the formation of our well hidden carry-ons which we dragged along with us throughout the rest of our lives. Stuffed into those carry-ons, went our earliest bad experiences; lessons of things which hurt us or made us feel uncomfortable.
ie: vanity, neglect, cruelty, rage, ridicule, shame, abuse, isolation, dominance, racism, alcoholism, adultery, drug addiction, disrespect etc., which gave us unpleasant feelings as our small bodies and minds were forming.
Adult Baggage. Don't ya just hate it?
Attempting to open up that carry-on and eliminate the junk can be difficult if we do not know what to look for. One thing not to look for is, blame. Blame exsists in our conscious mind. When we blame others like, our parents, for the way we are today, we are choosing to do so and thus, depriving ourselves the opportunity to advance into becoming responsible, healthy, loving and forgiving adults. Placing blame on someone for the way we now respond to circumstances or situations is equivalent to not trying to succeed because in doing so, we would be triggering unpleasant memories of our past. A cop-out, a way to dodge holding onto the reins and jumping the hurdles we must in order to get to the next is all finger pointing is.
A good practice to cease placing blame and finger pointing would be to accept our individual experiences of childhood days and embrace them as small puddles we had to skip over in order to reach the other side where the all the big people are. What about all the experiences we have collected and stored as heavy stones inside of that now, huge adult suitcase which we call, baggage? Well, it would be much simpler to handle if we changed the way we viewed those experiences and saw them as good things which taught us a lesson and helped us to become a better individuals. Let's change the appearance and content of our baggage. Instead of a huge bulky dull colored canvas bag full of a bunch of heavey stones which were hurled at us at different points in time, let's lighten the load by carrying instead a light-weight colorful nylon sack filled with aromatic flower petals and potpourri which we have collected as momentos of times when life gave us important instructions.
If we simply changed the perspective of how we view and interpret our experiences while 'on the scene', the stones which once weighed us down become as light and lovely as flower petals and makes our hike on the scene the experience it was intended to be.
That's the way I C It
