Baggage

When i packed all my stuff to leave IIM Calcutta for a short stay at home before I leave for the US, I just had three bags to take: a laptop backpack, a small suitcase with all my certificates and a big suitcase with all my clothes.
And it made me wonder! Is this all I need in life ?

But no! I have another backpack that I have packed and leaving behind which has a million other little things that matter to me in two boxes that I call memory boxes. They have like stupid things that Peter Gabriel says in song the Book of Love that "It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes And things we're all too young to know" ! But can I carry all that on my bag ??

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office... and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

I just need three bags!!!

Comments

  1. Reminds me of the HIMYM episode where all of us have some baggage.
    But we were discussing something today, and all of us agreed that you travel the lightest meaning you have the least baggage. :)

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  2. @shrey
    nice episode it was!
    Traveling at light speed since summer of 2008

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