The Weight of the Empty Suitcase

The first time I travelled long-term — a full year, on a small budget, mostly by train and bus — I did what almost everyone does the first time. I packed too much. I brought a jacket for cold weather and a jacket for warmth and a jacket for rain. I brought three pairs of shoes. I brought a hardback book I meant to read and never opened. I brought, for reasons I cannot now reconstruct, a small travel iron.

The suitcase, when I lifted it onto the first train, weighed twenty-three kilos. I remember the number because it was the maximum airline limit and I was quietly proud of hitting it.

By the third week, I had begun to leave things behind. Some were lost. Some I gave away. Some I quietly abandoned in hostel corridors when no one was looking, because I could not bring myself to admit, even to a stranger at reception, that I had carried a travel iron across two countries. By month six the suitcase weighed nine kilos. By month twelve it weighed six.

The last leg of the trip, I walked from the train station to my sister's flat carrying it on one shoulder without effort. She opened the door and looked at the small bag and said, 'That's it?' And I said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'You look lighter,' and she was not, I don't think, only talking about the luggage.

The obvious lesson is about packing. Take less. Fine. Every travel blog on earth will tell you the same thing.

The less obvious lesson is about what a suitcase actually is. A suitcase is a physical record of what you were afraid of when you packed it. The three jackets were fear of weather. The hardback was fear of boredom. The extra shoes were fear of being caught underdressed. The travel iron was fear of looking rumpled in a country where no one knew me and no one would care. Every kilo I carried was a small anxiety I had converted into an object and paid extra to transport.

What I discovered on the road is that most of those fears did not survive contact with reality. It rained. I got wet. I dried. I was bored on a bus. I looked out the window. Someone spoke to me. I was rumpled at a dinner. Nobody noticed. The world, it turned out, was a much more forgiving place than my packing had assumed, and my suitcase had been a monument to a version of myself that did not trust that yet.

I have started applying this idea to things that are not suitcases. My calendar, packed with the fear that if I say no to something I will be forgotten. My inbox, packed with the fear that if I do not reply I will be misunderstood. My savings, packed — beyond what I actually need — with the fear that if I do not have enough I will be exposed. My opinions, packed with the fear that if I do not have one on every subject I will seem shallow. Each one is a suitcase. Each one weighs something. Each one has a travel iron somewhere near the bottom.

The exercise, once a year or so, is to unpack. Not to throw everything out. There are things I actually need. The passport belongs in the bag. But the travel iron does not, and the third jacket does not, and probably neither does the hardback I have been meaning to read for eleven months. The lighter the bag, the further I can walk.

I still travel with a bag, of course. Everyone does. The question is not whether you carry anything. The question is whether every object in the bag is still there because you actually need it, or because a younger, more frightened version of you packed it and you never went back to check.