EXCESS BAGGAGE

I have just been thinking and writing about some of the trips I have taken over the years, especially in the past few years (since 2006) when I began travelling to Europe whenever I could.

Each of us takes a holiday for a different reason. For many, perhaps most of us, I think, it is because we want to get a change and/or rest from the routine of our daily lives. Usually most trips away from home will provide, at least this.

Beyond this however, your Holiday experience, may be a good one or a bad one. When the venue is a wrecked up Hotel in the Caribbean with a Pool the colour of copper and broken air conditioners and you have spent a year saving up for this experience, I say begin Drinking immediately and don’t stop until it is time to go home. I did.

Under most other circumstances, like so much in Life, the success of your trip will depend on your expectations and perspective.

Ultimately what you will come back home with, will be a combination of what you left with. How much BAGGAGE you were carrying, and I don’t mean LUGGAGE either, and what you made of the experiences you just had.

As I said yesterday; Giving People, Give. Selfish People declare that they are on Holiday and have told their families and friends not to expect anything because it is not their holiday. Good people are good; friendly people are friendly. Unfriendly people and unhappy people are soon seen as unfriendly and unhappy people quickly discover something to be unhappy about.

In other words, you take what and who you are along with you wherever you go. You return with the same face looking back at you and return also to the same life you left behind.

However, you can change, if you are ready to. You can always change, but only when you are ready to. You can come home having made new friends or not. You can however, come home with a renewed sense of who you are and what you want.

When I come home, I try to look at my life with new eyes. That can be the lasting legacy of a holiday. You can come back the same person, but a little different.

In my case, I became aware that I had been carrying a lot more BAGGAGE from the past in my life than I thought. My actual LUGGAGE was light enough that I had extra room within the Airline limits. The earlier trip this year and having to lug heavy bags around, as happens at some point on every holiday, soon teaches us the good sense in learning to pack lighter.

What isn’t lighter though is the BAGGAGE you took with you. It goes with you everywhere and like Dirty Laundry, comes Home with you as well.

The awareness of just how much lighter I felt when it wasn’t in front of me all the time, led me to FINALLY, deal directly with the remnants of a relationship that I had ended more than 4½ years ago.

It was only by going away that I became aware of how much time this dead thing was using up of my current life and how much the ostensibly innocent and gracious holiday phone calls, were causing me to relive, in the present, this unfortunate relationship from the past.

By allowing the calls to continue, I had insured that ‘out of sight’ still would not be ‘out of mind’, until I belatedly demanded an end to them.

We travel for our own reasons. Along the way, we can bring new people, ideas and experiences into our lives. These contribute to the texture and colour of our lives.

Travel can clear your head, open up new horizons and let you return home rested and refreshed. You can come home happy and ready to move into the future with renewed energy and enthusiasm and often also, a new outlook which you can enjoy adding to your life experience.