If there’s anything I’ve learned from traveling, I know how essential it is to pack light.

Traveling across the country has been a grace only inso much as you are able to practice a keen amount of flexibility. Some days will be absolute chaos—moving luggage from one place to the next, gathering groceries for the upcoming week, trying to build a temporary home out of a foreign location. The ability to be flexible is an indispensable trait that allows for one to have a deeper experience in new locations, an ability to nurture self-compassion in difficult moments and encourage growth. This flexibility in traveling, I’ve observed, is also something that is integral for our ability to create a healthy space psychologically as well.

To “pack light” literally means the way it sounds—to release baggage that simply is not helping us any longer. We each have years of experience, mental concepts and perspectives that become crystallized as we get older. But some of these crystalline perspectives cost us the ability to have inner growth. Or even inner peace. We feel heavy because we hold old stories to our chests, as if those stories even defined us; we clench tightly to old hurts and forgo forgiveness even as our palms bleed from the strain of constriction; we attack ourselves in the name of “self-preservation”, though it does nothing but damage our own inner trust. And when time comes for us to fly, we wonder why we are the bird that never leaves the nest. Leading to inevitable death.

To enjoy travel not only means enjoying seeing and experiencing a freshness of life around me, but also within myself. I can no longer afford the brunt of holding on to past hurts that no longer serve my ability to be peaceful and joyful in the present moment—my hands are too weary. I can no longer afford to spend the duration of my short time of this earth in self-caused pain, suffering and stagnation—my time is too precious. And I can no longer make excuses for worldly attachments fastening around my neck, keeping me tied to slippery ground, causing a rigidity in my uptight spine—I am meant to fly high above until I reach back into the heavens.

This is what it means to live a life that is limitless. A life that is all mine; a story between God and I, letting go of everything in between. I am so far beyond being defined by the resting place I place my head and so I will journey this world like a traveler—building a home within God only and myself.

What does living limitless look like to you?