“Judgement is someone saying to carry their suitcase.  Pain is like dodgeball.  Take that ball of pain they feel and throw it.  Being a crappy human will never make you a happy human. So when someone is judging you they are saying here is my suitcase of everything I’m miserable about (life circumstances, choices) take it.  DON’T take it.  We make choices about our lives based on a suitcase that was never ours to carry.  We started believing those lies and we are still carrying it.  PUT IT DOWN.  We all have our own suitcases of things we belong to us.  As far as our own stuff, don’t hand it t someone thinking it will help.  Start unpacking it.  Open up the suitcases.” Kristina Kuzmic. This is similar thinking to a piece I wrote weeks ago about Loren Ridinger’s quote on baggage we carry that isn’t even ours.  The way our society functions today is largely based on judgement of ourselves projected onto others.  This is twofold: the first step we need to take is to determine what is ours and what isn’t ours.  That requires the work of unpacking.  Then it requires the work of leaving behind what isn’t ours. 

Judgement does nothing for us beyond project those things that are inside of us.  We are triggered by others because we are dealing with something similar ourselves.  The truth is that Everyone has stuff.  That’s a capital Everyone. Sitting with what weighs us down is uncomfortable and it can be tricky to understand how to unpack it and decide if we need to let it go.  Anything that keeps us where we are, anything that holds us back, needs to be let go.  We can lovingly be grateful for it and let it go or we can address it head on and do what we need to do so we never have to carry that baggage again.  Imagine if instead of burdening others with things that don’t serve them we simply took the time to help them unpack their suitcase.  That doesn’t mean we are unpacking it to stay with us or to move it to our suitcase.  No. Sometimes we are helping others bury it in the ground.  Imagine we do this for everyone, for each other.  The world would loo a lot different if we took the time to look at what people carry with them and if we take the time to understand why.  Not that its our job to understand every person’s motives, but in doing that we learn to handle our own baggage as well.

For as much work as it takes to get through the idea of our suitcases, there is an incredibly simple fix: don’t pick up the suitcases and don’t let the suitcases hold us back.  I look forward to a time when I can teach my son to never fill the suitcase of fear in the first place.  Never fill the suitcase of doubt.  Never let the dreams be crushed by the extra stones we are trying to fit in a bag that we feel we need to carry because someone else told us we did or they carried it themselves.  The world doesn’t have to work like that anymore.  The invention of propriety and the way things “should” be was to keep people chained, to keep them under control.  The invention of guilt was to exert power and create a false sense of worth on a scale where we would be easily manipulated into proving something.  There is nothing to be ashamed of if we have picked up some baggage over the years.  There is no reason to feel bad about the human experience and navigating how to handle that.  There is also no reason to pick up anyone else’s baggage either.  Let’s help each other stay a while and do the work to feel comfortable in our own skin.