Baggage Check
We all have complicated histories. When was the last time your past experiences informed a major decision you made?
You may call it baggage, as if it’s unnecessary junk. But we are who we are because of what we’ve done. Where we’ve been. What we’ve learned — or failed to learn.
It shapes us, gives us character and makes us interesting. Experience is life.
A better question would have been when have past experiences not influenced major decisions? Presumably the point of experience is to apply it and avoid past mistakes. Use it to make better choices as we trudge along our paths.
If not that, life is just random chance. I’d prefer to think our experience make us smarter. Better able to deal with whatever life throws at us.
We don’t have to haul all our angst with us, but we ought to learn from it. At the very least.
A quote from http://lovehappynotes.com/2014/05/09/baggage-check/
“I’ve learnt more in sickness than in health, more from poverty than wealth. From the people who didn’t treat me kindly, I learned who not to be with, and how much kindness matters. From abuse came strength, resilience, and an iron will. From the wrong partners, I learnt what to look for in the right one. From loss and grief I learned to appreciate what I have right now. Of course, I would have much preferred that none of these things happened, but they did. Yet I am still here, those days are far behind me and I live in anticipation of many wonderful days and months and years. And they will come.”
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To which I say, “AMEN SISTER!”
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The trick is, to use past experiences wisely when making major decisions. We should neither forget nor exaggerate what we have (or should have) learned.
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Hopefully, we’ve learned something at least. I know people who never seem to learn and repeatedly make the same bad choices. I’d like to think I– most of us — are smarter than that.
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“A better question would have been when have past experiences not influenced major decisions?”
That is perfect. It’s amazing what a good paradigm shift can do for you.
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🙂
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I would just love to go for a walk down that lane. There’s a lot of wisdom in “them thar words”
Leslie
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I figure life is full of horrible stuff. There ought to be some value to surviving. To dismiss it all as baggage devalues us all!
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Hi Marilyn,
There is lot of good stuff too. For that we have to be very grateful.
Leslie
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It’s all there, good and bad. If you dismiss it all as baggage, what are you left with?
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Not a heck of a lot. Just hang onto the good stuff.
Leslie
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I absolutely agree, Marilyn. It is the failure to learn which is the problem. That is when the baggage comes to fill every room in homes both literal and metaphorical. xxx
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Well, if you don’t learn from it, it IS just baggage. Sort of negates the point of ones past. I like to think I’ve learned a few things along the way. Too depressing to think otherwise!
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I think the financial gaffes of the past are the hardest to forget. The residual damage is always with us.
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Some lessons, sadly, are learned too late. Money lessons for us came far too late.
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