One more internet dating prospect has evaporated back into the ether of cyberspace. No dinner. No coffee date. I have too much baggage, he says. Thirty-two years worth of baggage is pretty hard to stow in an overhead bin the size of calendar year. Yeah, I've got baggage and it's expensive to travel with it.But I think people who say they can pick up and go with their toothbrushes and the clothes on their backs are kidding themselves. Where's this guy been all these years?
I'm not sure I'd want a life (or a man) made of Teflon, but then again--this stuff is getting heavy. I'm now visualizing abandoned suitcases......here comes the bomb squad to blow them up.
2 comments:
Baggage is used in such a perjorative sense. We have experience. We have history. I can't say that I would erase one moment of learning even when the learning was excruciatingly painful. Yesterday my 25 year old daughter made the comment that she can't believe how her Dad is still so fresh in my mind, as if we had split up yesterday. She made this comment as she looked at me with love and devotion through eyes identical to her Dad's. How can I not think of him when she is the manifestation of everything I love(d) about him with none of the weird neurosis? She is the essence of the potential I recognized in my partnership with him. I see our grandchildren in her smile.
She moves to London in less than two weeks. Whe asked me to come with her as she selected a new suitcase, the perfect suitcase, one that would exceed all the assets of her past baggage. It would have wheels that would work in all directions and could spin around on a dime if necessary. It would be light but durable. Spacious, and expand three extra inches for the purchases which were inevitable when returning with memories and souveniers. I can't forget the time she returned from Dunkirk with a bag full of sand from the beach for her Grandfather, vetern of WW2. She made a zen meditation mandala in memory of her visit and the history that had happened there before and without her, and when she was there....
I'm keeping my baggage, I'm actually celebrating it, honoring it in spite of the pain. This doesn't mean I'm not going to clean it out every so often, or update the case as necessary. And I'm not wasting time with narcissistic men with fearful hearts closed to the possibility that my baggage includes 55 years of expanding and refining my ability to love (myself) with wisdom... And perhaps that is what he means when he says "baggage" : wisdom born of compassion for oneself.
Jules,
That comment made my evening. What hurt about his comment was the lack of compassion. Thanks for yours and your wisdom.
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