Travel Light by Tina Marian

Photo©SongAboutSummer/Shutterstock Travel Light

By Tina Marian

My mother-in-law died recently. She was 92. Martha was a strong-minded and hard-working woman, who was well known and loved in her community for many years. After her own mother died, she and Don, her husband, ran Mama Taccone’s Pizzeria in Rochester, NY. A popular, family-run and family-friendly place, the restaurant was known for its homemade Italian food, fish tanks full of colorful fish, and the pictures on the wall that told a story of family and city, alike. I would watch her at work — social, friendly, making sure that all of her customers were satisfied and made to feel welcome. Her magnetic personality was as much of a draw as the pizza, which she frequently gifted people with.

When someone we know or love dies, it causes us to at least stop and remember that death is the one-way bridge we all traverse, linking the time we spent wearing our body suit to wherever we go next. And that would be…

Well, where exactly do we go next? This is where we can get caught up with a myriad of suppositions. Is there a judgement? A Heaven? A Hell? Did Purgatory go by way of Limbo? Edgar Cayce says that all souls will be “saved.” Some say that we return again for another round, with your choice of parents included in the deal. Some believe there is no afterlife at all; this is it. Many will disagree. The old visual of us as winged beings after we die, dressed in white, sitting on clouds and playing harps always seemed so boring to me.

Perhaps this unknown is what bothers us the most. We are a species that really likes predictability. We have designed maps and compasses, and used the stars to seek direction for eons. We like certainty. And the only thing that is certain is that rich or poor, good or bad, all of us are going to cross over that bridge one day. Like it or not, our death is inevitable.

Nor can you argue with, “You can’t take it with you.” Despite her best intentions, when she left, Martha could not take with her the beloved array of beautiful things she had collected over time. This begs the question: is there anything we can take?

One thing I know is that when I arrive at the final station, I do not want to be saddled with suitcases full of old and unresolved angers, resentments, guilts, and all of that emotional trash we lug around. I would much prefer to leave here with just my lifetime of memories, starting back as far as I can remember, right up to the moment of departure, good and bad alike.

And, why the bad? Because for the most part, what we consider bad probably played an important role in a lesson that needed to be learned. So, if you follow that logic, there are only good things. We are not random creatures that just happen to arrive here for whatever reason. We are amazing, individual creations of a power we have yet to fully grasp! Once we arrive here in our body suit, it is game on from then on.

If I compare the way I thought in my young adult life to the way I think now, I can honestly say I like the way I think now better. Although I might be tempted to say, “I wish I knew then what I know now,” we can’t go back; we are made to evolve. We awaken to the understanding that all along the way, there are lessons, instructions, pieces to a puzzle, patches in a quilt. There are crumbs to be picked up that are meant to lead us down a path.

If you go to school and want to graduate, you have to take a series of prescribed classes. You would never expect to learn it all in a day. It’s an accumulation of lessons, one after the other. If you pay attention and keep your eyes open, you will graduate with high honors in life, itself — the best school of all. And, a great student understands that your life lessons are never complete. Until such day….

You may have heard at some point in your life, “Don’t die with your song unsung.” Although on an intellectual level we get that, there is something awfully haunting and compelling about it. That “song” is the very thing your soul yearns for, yet may be hindered from realizing by your own limiting beliefs. The thought that you may well die with your song unsung is kind of terrifying, isn’t it?

So, I like this better: “Don’t die with your lessons unlearned,” and P.S., “Leave your trash behind.” To me that is far easier to embrace. My “song,” yet unsung, is the book to write in this lifetime. I think about it all the time. What holds me back are excuses. For now, the book can stay in my future. When the timing is right, it will happen.

In real time, we can look for and learn from all the lessons life has to offer, and decide each day to throw out some bit of the emotional trash we have lugged around for far too long. Just like all the physical stuff you can’t take with you, in the end even those old emotions will get left behind. Why drag all that heavy trash of old, unresolved feelings all the way to your final stop, when you could have just let it go, and toted a light carry-on instead? You will not receive a medal for carrying the heaviest bag.

I have a boarding ticket — my faith in letting go of those unresolved emotions. Faith is something we are born with. Babies have an innate faith they will be cared for, but that faith may be eroded along the way. We need to have faith, trust, and believe in our power source. We say, “Keep the faith,” for a reason. Travel light and let faith be your ticket to the next level.

Tina Marian has been a nurse since 1974, and has studied numerous techniques of energy medicine beginning in 2006. She is an expert in the art and application of EFT, provides workshops teaching EFT, and has helped hundreds of people along the way.