Travel and Life

 I am sure everyone travels for work, pleasure, family and other reasons. My typical model is that I will neatly pack my things in the suitcases, take the trip. Will reach my travel destination, unpack. Initially neatly arranging the cloths and other items, that I need to use over the trip, in closets and drawers available.

Then the actual need for travel starts, be it work or leisure. However, I get so engrossed in the activities that I am never able to maintain the proper placement of cloths and other items neatly anymore. The cloths will start cluttering on the side chair and the shoes and socks near the door on the floor,

the toiletries cluttered on the bathroom counter and so on.

Then comes the time to return, and I get in the frenzied mode of collecting, cleaning, folding and placing things back in the suitcases. This is a stressful time. The items don’t fit, will not fold as neatly as they were when the journey had started, there will be kinks and wrinkles that are too stubborn to go and so on. I still don’t leave anything behind just because it is wrinkly or didn’t fit easily in suitcases. I exert effort to make room for everything.

Contemplating life as a journey I feel we follow similar process but may be somewhat less seriously.

When we start conscious life (after the toddler days of living like kings and Queens, thanks to parents) we start developing habits and building relations. Formal ones and informal ones. We keep these habits and relations with utmost care as we start. This is akin to unpacking and neatly arranging at the start of travel. Then we utilize those relations, and habits and at times ignore how we maintain afterwards. They lay scattered in our lives somewhere; at time ignored or being taken for granted. However, unlike the items on travel, the relations are mutual and with people who have own feelings, and mostly being taken for granted makes the wrinkles (of discontent) develop in the relations. Sometimes we take care of those during the journey and try to iron and maintain and make them better, but other times the wrinkles just set in deep (discontent becomes anger and disgruntlements).

Then at some point life journey starts getting to a point where it seems that some irreversible destinations (read other world) are inevitable and then eventually the end of the tour. Many of us foreseeing the turns of no-return start packing the bags again. Reaching out to the scattered and ignored relations. Trying to iron out the wrinkles. Reaching out to soften the fabric that binds and remembering how good the past experience had been. The only problem is that there are some wrinkles where pride had set in, and they will not be smoothened easily or sometimes not smoothened at all. But we should not leave them behind, unattended. Make peace with those and seek forgiveness, even if your pride says otherwise.

For such cloths with wrinkles, will you just leave them scattered ignored on the side chair, and leave them there for good? No, you do pack every single shirt, how badly it is crumpled on that chair. At the end of your journey, you always pack everything even if the creases were not smooth and the suitcase was bulging? For relations do the same; reach out and try to smoothen drop your ego and extend a hand or a hug. But better than that, just do a daily maintenance. Why wait till the journey is about to end? Why not do regular maintenance and give importance to those regularly?

Travel or life, this will work equally well; if you are, on a regular basis, neatly sorting and saving things like they were on the day one, the wrinkles will not develop, the creases will hold, the softness will be deep and not only on the surface. The value will be retained. And at the end of journey; it will be easy, no stress. Which some feel that is the key to a happier place beyond the current travels.