Excess baggage is expensive: Life Lesson #9

Deal with excess baggage quickly. It’s super expensive.

In the days following my college graduation, I had to make some decisions. One decision that I made was that the girl I loved I wasn’t going to leave behind. She would become my fiancée and then my wife. For that to happen, I needed a job.

Through a set of mutual friends, as things often happen in life, I got a job delivering lost luggage (baggage) at the airport. Daily, the major carriers misplace a few bags. With millions of travelers, that means that hundreds of bags daily need to be delivered to hotels, homes, and offices.

It was good and easy money. But the stuff. My word, the stuff people traveled with. 2 bags, 70 pounds each.  How could we ever survive without it?

Yet here we are, 17 years later. Amazingly, air travelers fly with fewer and smaller bags. I’ve actually been on a trip where I packed only a couple changes of underwear, a pair of slacks, and a shirt, all in my laptop bag.

Why? Did we suddenly realize our need for less stuff? The mounds in our storage closets, garages, and storage units expose that lie. What changed?

The cost changed. Traveling with heavy bags was no longer free. They came with a price time, a premium surcharge.

Everyone has baggage. Emotional hurts. Dysfunctions. Strange and broken ideas about the world. Some are small. Some of these bags are massive. The people who develop beautiful lives, that I’ve seen at least, manage early on to unload that baggage somewhere. And not pick it back up.

The emotional catharsis of unloading is easy.  The mental, physical and spiritual disciple of not picking it back up, that’s the hard part. See a professional. Become accountable. Live in community.  But deal with your stuff while you are young. 20 years of lugging it around and you’ll pay a high price. All that emotional energy and physical stress could be invested elsewhere with a huge return.

Don’t want to deal with your baggage?

Trust me, you can’t afford not to.