Luggage or Baggage?
It’s vacation time! Are you carrying luggage or your baggage with you? (And in case you’re wondering, I don’t mean the physical stuff!)
Though near-perfect synonyms of each other, baggage has several additional meanings which luggage doesn’t share.
We don’t know for sure whether the “bag” of baggage is the same as the English and French borrowed word for “sack to carry things in.” We do know that the “lug” of luggage is the word we still use to mean “to carry laboriously.”
The major difference between baggage and luggage isn’t in the concrete meaning but in the figurative meaning: we say “emotional baggage,” “political baggage,” and “personal baggage” to refer to intangible things that get in the way-but luggage is never used in this way.
You can’t possibly embrace that new relationship, new career, new friendship, new life while still holding on to the baggage of the last one.
Your ability to let go of your baggage can be enhanced by the reminders found in “The Knots Prayer” that follows, whether you believe that God is just another name for Universe or Love or Allah or…
Please untie the knots that are in my mind, my heart, my life. Remove the have nots, the can nots and the do nots that I have in my mind. Erase all the will nots, might nots that may find a home in my heart. Release me from the could nots, would nots that obstruct my life. And most of all, dear God: I ask that you remove from my mind, my heart and my life all the ‘am nots’ that I have allowed to hold me back, especially the thought that I am not good enough. –author unknown
