Excess Baggage

The Monkeys riding on our backs

These days a new enlightenment is dawning on me - the concept of excess baggage. It all started when I saw during my morning walks - so many people having a protruding bloated belly - I thought that is excess weight he/she is carrying. Slowly I became aware of so many other forms of excess baggage that we human beings carry. They are like monkeys riding on our backs.

I am now trying to unload these as I am also a carrier of these loads. I also felt that just like we have to pay excess baggage charges in airlines ( I am always a candidate for that.. ) , life too extracts certain penalty from us for accumulating and letting these excess baggage dominate our life.

Excess Body baggage: Too much fat ( also known as obesity) carried around our body weighs down and stresses the bony skeleton that is designed to carry a certain load. It strains the heart to pump blood in the face of such weighty resistance all over.

The baggage charge : All sorts of health issues, constant guilt of excess weight

Pack it light: Be aware of what you eat all the time. Eat for good health not just to satisfy the taste buds.

Material baggage: THINGS, THINGS and more THINGS. Over years we tend to accumulate lots and lots of things around us. We keep on adding to the pile - loads and loads of clothes, electronics, artifacts, hundreds of random things. Housewives collect even huge number of plastic bags, empty containers, vessels of all shapes and sizes. Some houses have mounds of news papers and old magazines. Some ladies collect shoes, make-up.

All our attics, storage spaces are choked with things.

Greed and desire for expensive jewelery, land, houses, cars etc. rule many who accumulate these even at the cost of their integrity, harming others even their nation.

Most of the things we collect are rarely used by us.

Harshad Mehta who lived in a one room tenement became so rich and had so many houses and cars all thanks to the share scam that he cleverly invented - but the man never lived to enjoy all that he died at the age of 36.

Instead of throwing away, we keep them thinking - "That may be useful someday". Only that someday never happens even once in five/ten/twenty years.

The baggage charge : Loss of precious space in the house, and loss of mental peace that will come by shedding these.

Pack it light: Just throw, throw, throw. Only keep things which you will use at least once a day.

Psychological baggage: So many past thoughts, so many future desires. Opinions about everyone , judgement, resentments, hatred, obsession, addiction fill our mind. Hundreds and hundreds of past events over years, pains and pleasures of the past, so many desires and wants for the future clutter and take up all our mental space.

The baggage charge : Not able to enjoy the light-weight and ultimate bliss and joy that comes by shedding this load off our back - OOPS mind.

Pack it light: This is a tough one as we have to go deep within ourselves. We have to understand ourselves. We have to learn to enjoy the stillness, silence

and expanse of the universe

within amidst all the external noise . We have to come to terms with our impermanence of our existence on Earth. We have to clean sweep our mental space constantly.

Relationship baggage: Some relationships bring us no joy and sit on us like chimpanzees and gnaw the very life out of us. It may be very close relationships like parent-child, husbands -wife, siblings, family relationships or peripheral ones like friends, official ones etc. We know the futility of holding on yet do not wish to unload these off our backs.

The baggage charge : They choke the very life out of us. Most expensive baggage charge - they extract the joy of living itself.

Pack it light: This is the toughest baggage to shed as we human beings are ruled by our emotions. If we can tear this monkey off our back and toss it out, we will feel unbelievably light and joyous within and FREE to live and breathe.

Ah !! All that philosophy BAGGAGE !! I am exhausted ...