Travel On

It is the “pomp and circumstance” time of year. 

Parents across the country prepare for the final rite of passage of teenhood – high school graduation.  As I remember approaching my own high school graduation, I remember feeling like I just wanted to get on with it. 

I was ready.  Ready for life to happen.  Ready to take the world by the reigns and go, go, go. 

What I wasn’t ready for was the unknown and unknowable - the change and transition that naturally come as we move through the journey of our lives.  The struggle to find equilibrium and creating a world that was my own while wanting desperately to continue to live in my parents’ world – safe, secure and cared for. 

Graduation, and other new beginnings, are full of hope and excitement, with a sprinkle of trepidation mixed in.  New beginnings are, by their nature, also filled with endings. 

We don’t often think of making time to grieve and heal when we are on the verge of a new beginning.  

Times of change and transition inherently mean letting go of something in order to embrace something new.  Our bags are packed.  We are ready to go.  We forget the “baggage” that comes along with us.

Change and transition give us an opportunity to repack our suitcase.  To honor and remember the “me” we are leaving behind and prepare to embrace the “me” that will emerge from the experiences in our future. 

To stay stagnant is to wither and die.  We must travel on. 

To repack our suitcase, not just for this journey but for all our journeys, is to embrace an acceptance and willingness to allow ourselves to change, be changed and move on. 

I think of the 50-pound luggage limit on airlines today.  You pack more than 50 pounds and you pay a price.  Life journeys are similar.  If we don’t inspect our luggage and throw out the empty bottles of shampoo, exchange dirty laundry for clean clothes, and swap a clean toothbrush for a used one, we carry around more than 50 pounds and we pay a price.  Where are we going to pack the artifacts from our trip to the Amazon?  How will we get the delicious bottle of wine we discovered in France home to share with friends?  How will we grow if our suitcase is too full of the past to include our present?  Or future?

We must travel on.

And to travel on means to hope and to grieve and to heal.  And it means we must make room in our suitcase.