The Baggage We Carry In Our Lives

Let's face it, we all have baggage. Those portable containers that pass through airport security are not the only baggage we carry through life. We all have that clutter of baggage from our past and present that threatens to block the goodness and bounty from getting inward into our hearts and into our lives. It is that silent and sometimes not so silent baggage that is triggered by life thoughts, ours and others that is allowed to wander as actual manifestations of what defines us.

The baggage we carry in our lives is ingrained within our cellular structures, light and life-giving, invisible life forces that direct our life journey. Yet, that baggage can also be as weighty as a two-ton truck barreling down on our existence bringing to our fore, the power of life's reckoning. It is a constant delusion if we walk through this world asserting that we are devoid of what comes with the first cognizance of thought and reflection, "baggage."

It is those delusions of life sans baggage that stifles our creativity and innovation and devoids us of our most precious internal motivation to embrace the fullness of life's opportunities and connections that should be our destiny and our heart. The weight of baggage can be transformed from emotions and actions into anchors that threaten to drag us deeper into the mire of what was then and what could be now in our lives. Baggage has a historical legacy in that it is passed on from generation to generation to hold and bear and buckle under its scrutiny and its judgment.

We will always have metaphoric and actual baggage that we lug through the valley of our destiny and trek up the mountaintop of our desires. What is inherent and what must be understood is that when we go to the "baggage claim" of our life thoughts to review and retrieve the emotional, psychological, behavioral, social and a host of other "als," the baggage is ours to deal with and bear. The scars left in the aftermath are also ours. Baggage can be both a burden and a release of historical legacies and past experiences that serve to continually undermine the legacy that we are trying to build in our current consciousness.

So, again, let's face it, the ugly and beautiful undeniable reality of living is that "we all have baggage that we carry in our lives." The most important point is that we are aware of our baggage and what we intend to do with it as we traverse the hills and valleys of our life thoughts and our life's journey towards our own personal "baggage claims."

Thoughts on Life's "Historical Legacies"

Everywhere I turn lately, I am confronted with the "richness of historical legacies," whether verbalized or implied in casual conversations or in the intensity of documented dictates. It creates pause for reflection and life thoughts. As each of us treads with purpose into the innards of the 21st century, what has become painfully obvious is that the shelf life of some historical legacies appears short-lived and oftentimes short-sighted. There is a global exposure of history that will leave future generations with wonderment coupled with an infusion of bewilderment for those who lived and left indecorous and indecipherable legacies for them to internalize and understand.

If we look at today's world where the armpits of humanity are exposed in public forums with a superfluous fling of attitude and polarized intentions, the historical legacy that is being left to the next generation and to those yet to be born borders on a deep-rooted power struggle of polarization that is more emotive and selfish than historical. The incessant verbiage of recent conversations on the richness of historical legacies that are being left as imprints on our planet creates a social, economic, emotional and educational divide for current generations and future ones.

As voices raise in the inculpatory polarization echoing off the mahogany walls of the power-mongers in a world inundated with debasements of cause and creed, there is an inherent marginalization and oppression of some that continues to create its own historical legacy. What historically has been rich and deepest in its roots of transformation has become a pourparier of inclusive groupings catering to misoneism as the history of demarcation continues to define our world.

But yet in definitive contrast, history has marked our life thoughts and our lives. What is even deeper in our collective world are the historical richness of legacies born of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds, that have served us well and created change and inclusivity within the depravity of fear and flux. It is important to understand and remember that there is indeed a "richness of many historical legacies" that have provided life, civil rights, equal opportunity, legislation of Brown vs. Board of Education, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Banneker, Nelson Mandela, Morgan Freeman, Maya Angelou and a host of historical legacies and lives that have lived, given back and continue to live and give in the universal consciousness of our thoughts and actions.

The beauty of this richness of history is that it was not done with polarization, denigration and exclusion of the very group that it purports to embrace, the collective world. In its truest manifestation of history and legacy, those who gave of their lives and their dreams did so within the collaborative drumbeats of the social consciousness and within the collective hearts of honor and integrity. Again, it gives pause for reflection and life thoughts.

I live my life in the richness of life's "historical legacies" that are written on the scarred backs of those who toiled the cotton fields and created rebirth on the soils of the African Sahara. I see my heritage in the sweat and tears of those who learned to read and run towards educational freedom and freedom of the mind and soul. I honor the legacy of those who gave the ultimate life sacrifice to etch in the soils of the global land, the richness of history that is not written in textbooks or stored in the deepest chambers of the historical vaults containing remnants of a history created to divide and polarize the spirits of humanity.

We are a world built on life's "historical legacies," and as we embrace upon the journey of a new year, it is imperative that we revisit that which is rich and historical in our own life thoughts and within our own legacy. It is important to revisit the richness of historical legacies that continue to serve as life connections of the spirit, hopes and dreams of our current world and the world of generations now and yet to come. It is time to pass the torch as our global world moves towards the collective goals of unity and change.

As the gatekeepers of our new world, it is our duty and charge to go forth in an "historical legacy" of renewal. As we leave the peaceful etchings of a global beating heart in the sands of a world that is evolving and creating its own richness and "historical legacy," only then can we rest forever in the folds of the Universe and rebirth.

Life Thoughts

Life Thoughts

We are born mixtures of cellular matter into human form
Infused with capacities of cognizance and connection
We sit life forms in pool spas protected by taut skin
Stretched over extended bellies of the motherlode

We kick out into a world stimulated by the chaos of life
Growing into young forms of humanity seeking
Knowledge wisdom of the elders who have preceded us
Sorting through the masses of overstimulation in our world

We sprout as proverbial weeds into flowers that puff
Into brilliance of thoughts and deeds of life acts
That contribute to the essence of life or perish in its ashes
As we seek to formulate personalities of self and service

We move along the journey of life in partnerships
Of life ties that bind us deeper into an understanding
That human survival began in the cesspool of a belly
Contributing nuances and genetic templates to who we are

In time we move beyond the firmness of thoughts and soul
Into the flaccidity of reflection and spiritual yearnings
As we project back into the conception of life that began
In the heavens under the belly of the clouds and the rain

Until one day when the time of life becomes the time of return
We are called back into the cataclysmic embrace of life matter
Once again becoming the atoms of a universe
That for billions of years has given us a chance to experience
a different type of life form.