Let me start with an apology. I’m sorry I haven’t blogged for over 2 weeks. Our family experienced a setback and we were thrown into something we were not ready for! Rings a bell? Yes, that’s pretty much how our life has always been, And I’m sure at least 80 percent of your life has been the same too! What can I say? Life just happens!
I also want to thank each one of you who messaged me out of concern when I was missing in action. It means a lot to me that even if we haven’t met personally, my blog family is so attached to me!
You know when we are at our lowest, we get frustrated and vent out a lot of things. And when we get a chance to hear what we just said, we realize what is weighing us down. Yesterday I had my eye appointment. It’s a two hour drive from here so I had a lot of time to introspect what has been happening in my life. The 4 hour long drive to and fro gave my husband and me also some much needed “couple time”!
I have said this earlier, my husband is the practical one of our family and I’m the emotional one. We are the right mix and probably that is the top most reason why our marriage has survived all the hard blows!
We were talking (read arguing) about the things that are not going the way they are supposed to. While talking and citing my reasons my husband and I realized something. It was like an epiphany of sorts!
We both realized at the same time that I am completely weighed down by past experiences and emotions.
I have been carrying so much excess emotional baggage that I have been dragging along and that was literally sitting on my shoulders and pushing me down, not letting me move forward.
And that realization kind of broke my shackles in a moment. Those shackles which fastened me to the past. Those shackles which tied me down and never let me move on. It wasn’t an ex-lover that I had to move on from. That’s always easier and I’m sure all of us know that. Both my husband and I happened because of our personal rebounds! :)
I had to break free and move on from my past traumas, the people who I had expected would help me out but didn’t. The people who had wronged me. The people who actually don’t mean anything to me but I have been replaying my experiences with them in my mind constantly and gaining nothing from it but hurting myself instead in the process.
Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Dr. Paul T P Wong says, “emotional baggage, more than anything else, prevents us from moving forward. It is a deadly trap we set for ourselves and are reluctant to leave, because of our stubborn attachment to some feelings.” I found this the best explanation to what emotional baggage is.
Now let me simplify it for you in my words. You know how we sometimes have excess baggage when we are travelling via flights. We either need to discard the excess baggage or pay for it to take it with us. This is the same way emotional baggage works too. If you need to continue the journey called life, we need to either discard and let go of this emotional baggage or else we have to pay for it in terms of our mental peace and physical health and carry it on our shoulders to move forward. And you know what happens when we have heavy things on our shoulders right? It slows us down. We can’t move forward. We can’t reach our destination.
Hanging on to the past destroys our present and future and I’m a perfect testimony to it. When I was struggling with depression, my psychologist had told me to let go of these things, however much they have hurt me then, they are not relevant now. My son is thriving and I should be proud and happy about that.
The truth is, this is easier said than done. My husband says this is a girl’s thing and I don’t really know much about it to argue with that statement. I’m a girl and I have definitely struggled with it until yesterday.
The moment you realize that holding onto the past is doing nothing but just holding you back and affecting your peace of mind, you let go! I’m not saying what happened is right, it is wrong but it is not relevant anymore. You cannot change the past. What has happened has happened, make sure it doesn’t happen again. Learn from your experience and move on. Don’t let any of those people who wronged you anywhere near you. They didn’t give you any importance, now you stop thinking about them. They don’t deserve the importance you are giving them by constantly thinking about them. If it’s any solace, please know that Karma is a bitch and if anybody has done wrong, Karma will get to them too. What goes around comes around. That is the law of nature. So let nature take its course while you move on with your life.
This is the first thing I chose to write because I realize how powerful this is. There are so many things I have started with excitement and left mid-way because I cannot complete it. But after I let go of these bitter feelings and memories of those experiences, I got back to writing, my first love! I made time for it and that’s the power of letting go of emotional baggage! You don’t have to forgive everybody and become a saint. That’s not what I’m saying! But let go of those people. Flush them out of your system. I have literally deleted the numbers of people I hate from my phone so as I don’t see their names often. Do what you must to restore your mental peace, however silly it may seem and live your life the way you want and give life the importance it deserves..