Travel Light

 

“The key is this: Meet today’s problems with today’s strength. Don’t start tackling tomorrow’s problems until tomorrow. You do not have tomorrow’s strength yet. You simply have enough for today.” ~ Max Lucado

Happy New Year and cheers to another 365-day-journey that is already 5 days old!

During the last quarter of 2023, I discovered a podcast about achieving a clutter-free organized home of your dreams. I dove in and soon discovered many strategies to declutter not only your home but also various aspects of your life. A few days before the year’s end, I also came across an article about a Feng Shui cure for getting unstuck, that entailed moving 27 things. Well, it seemed like a bad idea to waste a ton of new learning so I got to work decluttering and reorganizing.

Clothes, shoes, notebooks, books (gasp!!), utensils, and a host of knickknacks I can’t quite classify were all on the to-go list. And so they went. And the process is not over yet, hence the title of today’s musings – my resolution this year is to ‘travel light’.

I’ve always envied people who could up and go for a week’s trip and only carry a rug sack that’s not even half full! How?

Well, I’m not even close to getting there and it’s certainly not one of my goals. If it ever happens, it will be a surprise. However, there are a lot of other ways that I can achieve travel light status in life. And that is a goal worth pursuing.

One of the most profound ways to travel light is to let go of people. Especially people who offended you, hurt you, wronged you. Forgive them and let them go because unforgiveness has been found to cause depression and even heart disease. Put that weight down, set and enforce your boundaries, and move forward as a lighter person.

Things are another major category for decluttering. We acquire stuff for a variety of reasons – utility, aesthetics, keeping up with the Joneses. . . any number of reasons. As we go through life, some of it is no longer useful but we always hold on to most things way beyond the expiry date of their utility in our lives. Look around you and ask the things you see what purpose they are serving in your life. If it’s time to retire, say thank you and do the necessary. If they’re still paying rent in your life, then good to know. “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of it.” 1 Timothy 6:7 ESV

Relationships. This is a hard one for many reasons. However, if a relationship has run its course, best to decouple the train cars early than to wait until there’s a collision down the line. Sometimes we hold on to people because of what they represented in our lives yesterday, forgetting that today is a new day and there may be a new connection waiting in the wings but until our hands are free to receive, it cannot come in. Examine your relationships – who needs to go, who stays, who moves to the periphery, and who gets ushered into the inner circle?

Lastly, read the quote by Max Lucado again. Declutter your thoughts. Are you worried about stuff that is still in tomorrow? Are you still mulling about stuff that was yesterdays ago? Come back to the present and you’ll see that there is enough here for today without you carrying baggage from yesterday and tomorrow. “Only this actual moment is life,” said Thich Nhat Hanh. Therefore, be present, lest what you have been looking for all your life pass you by. Be present and alert.

I go into 2024 light on the goals, light on the resolutions, light on the possessions, light on the burdens, (heavy on the yarn stash . . . sigh). I propose to live out this year present to the moment-by-moment unfolding of my life. Open to learn, open to wonder, open to the miracles as they unfold.

May the year ahead be kind to you.

“Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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