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| The Author With Baggage |
I mentioned
in a previous post (“Close or Close?”) that on a visit to Utopia in the Texas
Hill Country I picked up a book by a local author. While reading that book it became obvious to
me that there are a lot of life lessons that could be learned from people
around Utopia if a person just paid attention.
But I guess that could be said of the people around almost
anywhere. I was back in Utopia recently
and while there I remembered a quote recorded in that same book. The quote was from the same lady I referenced
in the previous post. She had lived a
long life in the canyon and during that time had ranched, operated a general
store, and had managed rent houses. She
had been married a couple of times and she had raised children. She had done a lot. She described her life for which she had no
regrets about how it had turned out, by saying, "Some things I shore wish never happened did, and some things I
wish happened never did." *
Most of us do
not really want to have an interesting story.
We do not want to be the testimony of a life gone bad and then retrieved
from the fire. We would just rather miss
that life gone bad part. But as we look
back we can all think of times when things did not go the way we wish they
had. One exciting thing about retirement
is that it usually happens at an age where we can look back with some pride
that we have lived our story and learned some things from it. Before retirement we have probably entered a
lot of life's tunnels and have made it out the other end.
Because of
that, no one gets to retirement without some baggage left over from our life
journey. And sometimes that baggage is
pretty heavy.
I was
fortunate to be able to do quite a bit of traveling during my life before
retirement and I always had baggage with me when I went. As I think about the baggage left over from
life's journey and the baggage I carried with me on my traveling journeys I
figure there must be some logical similarities to connect the two types of
baggage.
The most
obvious thing is that they are both heavy and cumbersome to handle. Sometimes when I traveled, the most tiring
part of the travel was handling the baggage.
Loading and unloading. Packing
and unpacking. Deciding what to bring
and what not to bring. Asking myself,
“Why did I bring that with me? Will I
really need that?”
A less
obvious similarity between the two types are baggage are that they are both
necessary and useful on the journey we are taking. Of course that is true of the suitcases of
clothes, toiletries, and other items I took with me on trips. Without those I could not have gone the
places I went and done the things I did while I traveled. But what about the “baggage” we pick up as we
go through life's journey?
It seems to
me that that baggage is necessary and useful too. Without it I could not have gone the places I
went in life and done the things I did.
When someone says they have a lot of baggage in their life they usually
mean they have suffered experiences that weigh heavily on them. It is a fact that all baggage is heavy when
carried. But in my life even the bad
experiences (baggage), especially the bad experiences (baggage) have been
learning opportunities that help me make the most of retirement.
* Walton, Greg. Bear Meat 'N' Honey - An Oral
History of the Sabinal Canyon. Vol. 1. Austin: Acorn, 1990. 30. Print. Used by permission.
