Excess Baggage

Once again, my sister underestimated her luggage requirements for a trip to Walt Disney World. To be fair, this time she had two little kids, one slightly older big kid who is her husband, and a loving and indulgent grandmother along. This may have had a minor effect on her luggage requirements as they cleaned out souvenir stand after souvenir stand to satisfy their urge to spoil the kids rotten. They're cute kids. Who can blame them? But, as I watched this bloated monstrosity of luggage wending its way from hotel room to baggage claim to airplane concourse, I couldn't help but wonder - who needs all this stuff?

My Mom and I got into an argument about this on the trip. At our first sit down restaurant, the waiter brought over some blue plastic dolphins for the kids to use for tracing with their crayons. The kids are 2 and 1 respectively, and so, to them, the dolphins were merely toys which they quickly grew tired of and tossed on the floor (en route to a major first day meltdown ;) After the kids had left and it was just my Mom and I remaining to take care of the bill and what not, we got into an argument about whether we should gather the blue dolphins for the kids. "They're not going to even remember them," I argued. "They'll remember them," My Mom countered. "They remember all of their toys." My sister confirmed this side of the argument later by pointing out that it took her son only about fifteen minutes to realize that she had donated some of his toys to Goodwill once - toys he hadn't played with in over six months. From the distance of perspective, this attitude towards toys seems warped - but I'm certain that I was the same way when I was a kid. "Rosebud" rings true to us all because there are things in our lives that we try to get back once they're missing. There are things we all cling to as external extensions of ourselves, that seem to diminish us when they are gone.

A few days earlier, as I devoured C.S. Lewis's brilliant "The Great Divorce", I was quite frankly a little annoyed with the great writer's view of the afterlife. To be very concise, the story is about a man who finds himself walking through a gray city and eventually joining a bus queue for a bus trip to Heaven. He encounters various people on this journey and each one displays some annoying characteristic - many different archetypes of various attitudes about life, faith, etc... - that will more than likely eventually keep them from embracing God's love and going to Heaven. I'll talk more about that in future segments. What annoyed me about this afterlife, initially, was the fact that there seemed to be almost no joy in the afterlife.

I want to believe in the sort of quintessential picture of Heaven - bright light, pearly gates, heavenly choir to sing me in through the gates, wings, harp, the whole nine yards. I'd like to think that when we die, we are embraced with beauty and love and all our cares and thoughts from the real world disappear.

In this afterlife, however, C.S. Lewis seems to suggest that while we can't take physical items with us to the great beyond, we are able to pack our bags with personality quirks, old arguments, lies, disbelief, and other assorted goodies. No shining white light, no pearly gates, no instant knowledge of God - you might even have to work a while to discover all the secrets of the universe.

Annoying, but thought provoking.

What would I pack in my bag? What sort of luggage would I take with me to heaven? What sort of excess, extraneous baggage that I just can't live without, would I try to drag along with me into Heaven? In terms of "things", what could I not live without?

I live in a society where things have equal importance with substance - where having an IPOD is almost on the same level as having clothes to wear or a job. In fact, many of us view our jobs as merely a means to get an IPOD. We don't do meaningful work, we simply do whatever we can so that we can afford the latest things. Those things change as we get older. We replace IPOD's for fancy weddings or new cars or a bigger house or expensive and lavish vacations. Things take spots in our hearts that should be reserved for the love of others, for the love of experience, for the love of God. Jesus pities the rich man's attempt to get into Heaven precisely because he has all those "things" in his heart - money, power, luxury - that he could never have enough room for Heaven. And what does he need it for? What comfort does it really get him? What happiness does it really bring?

I mention all this not to cast aspersions on others. We all have our own baggage and most of it is excess. C.S. Lewis's book merely pointed out to me that I've been hauling around a lot of stuff that I no longer need, and never really did. Its time I rediscovered what was truly important in my life and repacked my luggage for a different kind of journey.