Leaving The Baggage At The Corner of August & Forty-Five

16 July 2015

"Every time you get upset at something, ask yourself if you were to die tomorrow, was it worth wasting your time being angry?" ~Robert Tew


What a powerful question...and it goes perfectly with my goal over the next three weeks. On 4 August I will turn forty-six. My mother died when she was forty-six and honestly that fact has been looming in my mind for a long time. I've been dreading this birthday more than any other because I know she didn't make it out alive. Somewhere in my mind, I've convinced myself this is very significant (...and maybe it is). She was two months away from turning forty-seven when she passed from this world unexpectedly and more than once I've wondered if I will share her fate. We all have an expiration date, there's no getting around it. None of us are privy to the details of said date, so living EACH day as if it's your last seems prudent. It's not that easy, though. From one day to the next, we drag around old hurts and new like over-stuffed pieces of luggage (hence the term baggage). No one is exempt from this except maybe monks high on a remote mountain in the middle of nowhere. How long are we supposed to carry this junk around? What's the secret to just letting it go?

I imagine myself walking down some old dirt road flinging the contents of my baggage into the surrounding forest or nearby ditch because frankly all this shit has gotten WAY too heavy. My own fault, without a doubt, for all of the things I struggle to let go of. I am determined to leave anything behind me COMPLETELY as I walk into forty-six, so I'm giving myself the remaining days of being forty-five to gnaw on whatever I want, as much as I want, until the moment that next birthday hits. And then, BAM! Whatever is not standing right next to me is staying on the road behind me, period. Friendships, relationships, old wounds, anger, jealousy, the last vestiges of hate, disappointments, etc. g-o-n-e. That doesn't mean I become completely oblivious to my past, as most of what is there consists of the building blocks that have made me who I am today. To erase any of that would mean I completely disappear as well. No, it means that anyone, anything and everything that is not helpful or adds something positive to my today or my future has to go. Maybe forty-six is the last year of my life...or perhaps I have another fifty years on top of that to go on adventures and live with a gusto. Whatever lies ahead, it won't be hampered by anything or anyone I intend to leave behind. New experiences, new heartaches and joys...and the mystery of whatever wonderful stuff is coming next...THAT is what I'm taking into my future.

*P.S. Thanks for being my Muse today, Laura! XxXoOo