I have the best conversations with other women about dating, romance, and relationships! This past week, Carrie was telling me she’s checking out what baggage she brings to a relationship, and right now isn’t so sure that she’s interested in dating. All the baggage women bring with them to dating and relationships can be just too overwhelming. As I let ideas about entering and staying in relationships roll around in my head over the next couple of days, the idea of our personal “baggage” became a great analogy for me.
Then, my best pal Linda came for a visit. We love that we’re willing to sort through the best and the worst of life together. I wanted to run my ideas about dating, relationships and this new baggage analogy by her. I told her that my baggage image often works like this. I see someone I like, leap wildly in her direction to get her attention. Instead of meeting her as the suave person I am in my mind, I can trip over a range of silly beliefs limiting my true self. As if tripping over baggage lying on the ground in front of me, I land flat on my face.
Linda told me she has enjoyed noticing how well she’s mastered her baggage-as if it were a ball she twirls easily on one finger. Then, without warning that easily spinning ball becomes a huge boulder crushing down on her until she is unable to breath or move. After considerable laughing and crying at ourselves, I realized that our souls know that the baggage is truly irrelevant.
My soul understands that the baggage between me and someone that I want to connect with is really nothing to trip over. Of course my soul wants to leap wildly toward someone that’s attracted my attention. Connecting genuinely with others is one of the most basic aspects of our lives.
And, what about that crushing baggage my pal Linda is dealing with? Truly, her soul can handle her past as deftly as a WNBA player handles a basketball. Our minds, bless them, want us to believe that our past is huge and inescapable, sitting idly by ready to trip us or smash us whenever a chance arises. This is just not true. Consider that any piece of baggage we haul around with us is merely a set of beliefs we’ve gathered from our past. If our baggage is only outdated beliefs about ourselves, we get to decide if those beliefs have any benefit to us in the present.
I don’t know about you, but I find my soul’s perspective so much more attractive. I can trash that false belief that I need to DO SOMETHING to demonstrate how special I am. Maybe I’ll keep my wild leaps, but they will be the greeting of a liverated soul now, no longer held down by insecurities. And Linda gets to be proud of her deft baggage handling and decide what she wants to do with her past. Maybe, like Carrie, each of us can look at what’s in our baggage and decide what to keep and what to pack up for the second hand store.
What about you? Are you ready to lighten your load? What image comes to mind when you think about your dating/relationship baggage? What is your soul trying to remind you? What experiences from your past are gifts that you want to keep, and which ones are you ready to trash or pack up for the second hand store?
