Life out of a suitcase
I was born to a busy family of traders, breastfed in the back room of the shop among burlap sacks and cardboard boxes. My first “part time job”, at 5 years old, was to hand my mother shopping bags from under the till. Within a year, I was “promoted” and started bagging the shopping for customers myself. My hobbies included stacking toys, organising closets and cleaning cupboards. Before I became an adult, I had the ability to accurately guess the weight of random items just by holding them in my palm.
Efficient packing was one of the most useful skills I gained at the family business, and it has served me throughout my life so far: Make the most out of a single cardboard box; Choose one which fits the quantity and proportions of your items precisely when possible; Stack items appropriately in order to make sure it is balanced and easy to carry; Sensitive items go to the top and should be allowed room to breathe as they cannot support the weight of heavier baggage; Count the contents and confirm that nothing is missing.
My life has followed a similar pattern with both practical and emotional baggage. For much of my early adulthood, I shoved family relationships, childhood friends and dreams down to the bottom of my box, while gathering new experiences, things, friendships and memories with little care on how they accumulated, affected me, or balanced one on top of the other. Over the years some of them found their place lower in the box to add to its stability, while others became crushed and thrown out of it.
In fact, right before my mid twenties, I moved to Scotland with hopes of gaining some independency and growing outside my comfort zone. In order to follow that goal, I decided to take with me only a suitcase’s worth of clothes, personal items, memorabilia etc. The first thing I did was to go through several albums of old photographs picking those that would decorate my new walls. Small, delicate objects were wrapped in scarves or socks, tightly secured among clothes folded in elaborate ways to allow room for my favourite snacks and coffee that I wouldn’t be able to find abroad. Anything I could not see as part of myself or my future, was donated, discarded or recycled.
The first flight to Scotland felt long, but the two years I spent in Edinburgh flew by in the blick of an eye. I had considered my stay there an opportunity to settle and grow as a person, but I had not set a clear answer to what I wanted to grow into. One day, I was hit by a realisation that I may have had outgrown my emotional box. Apart from the very cold and long winters, I had met many great people and lived a life that I was not ready to let go of, but I was struggling with finding my future and my place in society. My box had started to feel imbalanced; too heavy to carry.
Once more, I gathered my belongings and set out for a new life journey by returning to my point of reference, my birthplace. I figured, if I could not find my direction at the place which raised me, I might fail to do so anywhere else, too. After all, it is very easy to get stranded, caught up or distracted in foreign lands. Although I was not facing any “reverse cultural shock”, my point of view had vastly changed. I was able to see and appreciate my hometown, my people, my whole up until that point life in different ways thanks to the distance that had been brought between us. For the first time, I was inspired by both the advantages and flaws of my birthplace while misconceptions, concerns, hesitation and disappointments were thrown out of the box. I started packing my suitcase anew. This time, I was not looking for independency from my roots, but for tools that would make me more dependable for others.
My way to Japan saw me again with a single suitcase rolling behind me and a backpack on my shoulders. Everyone who came to see me off at the airport gave doubtful glances at my suitcase and asked over and over whether I had everything I needed. I opened the top of my suitcase to give it one last check: my coffee, favourite snacks, photographs and postcards were this time accompanied by souvenirs from Greece, not for me, but for people I was hoping to meet. On top of them, lay a childish looking poster that my best friend had drawn of me.
