Luggage

Joy unspeakable. . . . Luggage returned. Funny, because my last call to Otto was not two hours before the courier service called me, and at that point in time, Otto still didn't have a clue where my bags were. Thankfully, not everyone is as clueless as Otto.

I'm quite relieved. Now I can settle back into being here.

It's funny the importance we put on things. I kept trying to tell myself that it didn't matter, that if my luggage was lost for good, my life would still go on. And, of course, it would have. But it's interesting how experiences like this remind you of the fragility of . . . well, everything. So few things in life are fixed. To borrow from Jonathan Larson, everything really is rent. You have what you have for a time, but it isn't really yours. You pay into it, maybe, or you put time into it, or maybe you just expect it to be around because it always has been. But all things material are ultimately transient. You never know when "stuff" is going to come or when "stuff" is going to go. People, too, in a sense. So you pay in, for the time you have. And then it's done. And you either go on or you don't.

I don't mean this is what happens on a spiritual level. Simply in a physical sense. I know that there is much more that exists beyond me, beyond luggage, beyond this physical world, and it will outlast all of us. So with this statement I'm not meaning to equate life to with "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." But maybe if we recognized the transience of things that are simply that--things--we'd gain a new perspective on what really matters.

Of course, this comes from the girl who now has her luggage back. And I'm very thankful.