A Baggage Called Past (Part I)

Let’s take a trip together, a trip into your childhood.

Each one of us carries a “baggage”. My baggage might be larger or heavier than yours. Or perhaps yours is heavier or larger than your friend’s. Your baggage may have clothes inside that are more beautiful and colourful than mine. The clothes in my baggage can be blacker or uglier or dirtier than those of the guy next to me. And the list may go on.

This baggage is my past or your past, or everyone’s past. The clothes inside are our memories. We all carry it, whether we realise it or not. And we needn’t compare our baggage, we simply couldn’t, because it differs for everyone, and we feel its weight depending on our own power to carry it, as well as on what we choose to see inside:  only the dirty clothes? Only the black clothes? If we only compare our baggage, we will do nothing but victimise ourselves and judge those around us, focusing away from our baggage. The difference is not in the shape or size of the baggage, but in how each one of us feels it, in every individual’s power to cope with and carry it.

I hear many people saying “the past is in the past”. Yes, this is partially true. The thing is you can’t ignore your past or childhood, it’s part of you, this past, this childhood shaped the adult you are today. If you only accept the idea that the past is in the past, without questioning anything, you are “stuck”, repeating the same mistakes and not growing, not learning the lessons life gives you. On the contrary, you go deeper and deeper in the darkness of self-pity and meanness, of revenge and blaming others. The baggage with clothes and all have remained stuck in your subconscious, whether you want it or not. But, as an adult, you have control over you and it’s you and only you, and your thought pattern having the task to become what you want to be. To break yourself free from any and all of your childhood evil and insults, to always reverse the evil and harvest positive outcomes.

An example I use quite often is this: let’s assume a small child is purposely pushed or accidentally falls into the water. The child is terrified, almost drowning but is eventually saved. Years pass by and the child becomes an adult. Naturally, this adult is very scared of water. One accepts this and stays away from water as much as possible and does nothing in this regard! And sometimes one says it out loud and clear, maybe even angry because they feel nobody understands they are scared of water when someone actually tries to give them a hand to help them face their fears and discover the beauty of water, of swimming, of laughter in the water… This is the case of those people saying “the past is in the past”. They do not heal, they only accept. They do not face the challenges, only live as if pushed forward by the inertia of a new day. On the other hand, there are those people who say “OK, I fell into the water! It happened a very long time ago, nothing bad happened to me! What if I tried to go into the water?” And they embrace the fact they have so many people around them, encouraging them and start having confidence and trust. But the confidence needs to come from within. If they aren’t fully convinced in their entire being they can succeed, then there’s no use at all in them being surrounded by so many dear people who encourage them. In this second situation, one needs a lot of courage, a lot of trust. In this second situation, the person chooses to see the accident in their childhood as a life lesson and to free themselves, to go beyond their limitations. And they go into the water. And they see it’s a lovely feeling. And they dare go deeper and further. There is fear, but they continue, for the fear becomes smaller. Such a person first trusts their own power and then the water, becoming fully aware how pleasant it all is. They lie on their back and let themselves be gently moved by the water and see nothing wrong happens. On the contrary, the water is so much fun, so relaxing! The water is a liberator! Fear vanishes and joy arises, a joy they have missed all these years when being afraid of water. The number of people who have the courage to face the water and fully enjoy and love it after that water has terrified them is unfortunately smaller, in my opinion. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we generally let our fears and lack of self-confidence and trust in our own powers destroy us. Both situations are absolutely normal and no one is to be blamed, as everything has its roots in the past, in the childhood, in how we see ourselves, for we trust and believe with our whole being all we have been told in childhood and it becomes the reality and truth for us.

So, what do you choose now? Will you swim or will you remain stuck in your procrastination, in the same repetitive pattern while life passes by?

The water in this example is the very life itself. Dare to swim, life is beautiful! Life is what you want it to be!

To be continued…