Excess Baggage

Every time you take another step in life towards the ideal lifestyle you want to lead it’s logical to make constant notations of your purpose, your goals, and your priorities but one of the most important things I think that we need to be mindful of is the luggage that we carry along with us from step to step. The baggage that we saddle ourselves with on our journey in life, be it mental or emotional, can be more damaging if we take it with us rather then if we were to just let it go and leave it behind. But saying that you forgive and actually having forgiveness in your heart and letting go are two very different things and the two often get misconstrued. I say all of this having recently discovered that the things and people I thought I had forgiven because I said I forgave them I had not. I had not yet let the anger and resentment go which meant I was in fact still holding on and thus hurting no one more then I was hurting myself.

Forgiveness allows for us to clean the slate of negative emotions and allows for a fresh new start. It means you are letting go of your anger which does not imply that you bury your feelings but rather you change the way you look at that particular situation. You have to move out of the past and into the present before you can move into the future which requires you to let whatever it is that you insist on holding onto go. Now that’s not to say that this is an easy task because I am finding it to be extremely difficult but I feel as though I have to try because I realize that what I am holding onto so tightly is holding me back and bogging me down at the same time. It’s keeping me from reaching up and grabbing that peace of mind and all of the blessings that I am deserving of which are right there at my fingertips but I can’t because I am so weighed down.

Let’s face it, we all have things that have happened to us in the past that hurt us and people who have wronged us and we’ve all been angry to the point of wanting revenge and sometimes to the point of actual retaliation. We have all had grudges that we held onto with all of our might but if we hold onto those grudges they will bind us to the past and hold us in place so that we can not move on until we have come to a point of forgiveness. By refusing to let go we inadvertently begin to harden our hearts and building up emotional walls which is what we use to try and protect ourselves from being hurt again. However, hardening our hearts is not the answer because not only does it keep us from opening up and receiving good heart felt emotions but also it stifles us and keeps us from growing and moving forward with our lives.

This is not just a philosophy that holds true for our professional lives but also our romantic relationships as well. When we are so focused on the person or people in the past who have hurt us in whatever way then how can we expect to be able to attract someone who isn’t going to do the same thing because that’s all we’re focused on. Also how can we be able to allow ourselves to see someone good that may be right in front of us because we’re too concentrated on what has happened before? We can not change what has happened to us in the past but we can make our present worthwhile and even improve upon our future. Whenever entering a new relationship or a new situation in life we have to learn not to let the past begin to weigh us down and start to leave our luggage from our previous trip at the door.

Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Release Date TBA)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
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