Packing: How Much Does Your Life Weigh?

Every night after I come home, I step over the empty suitcase next to my bed.

It’s no secret that I hate to pack, even for vacation. I have moved 15 times in my life, and I hate the process of packing my entire life away in boxes.

Even though I am incredibly excited to study abroad, I am not excited about trying to pack up everything I need for 90 days.

When I talked to my mom about packing, she told me not to pack much. “No one in Europe will know if you bring three shirts or 50. Pack lightly.”

It got me thinking, how much stuff is too much? When I am backpacking through Europe, how much will weigh me down?

It made me think of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) in Up in the Air, who traveled with just his backpack.

Ryan Bingham: How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office... and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

Ryan Bingham didn’t really believe in relationships; he said they weighed a person down. I hate to say this, but I used to get it. I used to not let anyone in because the more someone knows about you; the more you are weighed down. Like Ryan Bingham, I having been working on letting people in.

With that on my mind, I am still ignoring my packing.  I will probably ignore it until a week before we leave. But I really don’t think that it should matter.

Once this adventure is over, I know I won’t remember what outfit I was wearing when I visited Paris or Rome. What I will remember is what happened during this incredible experience, and most importantly, the people with whom I will be sharing the adventures.