I pack my suitcase and take with me...
Never thought there could be anything exciting about packing a suitcase?
Read my blog and see how a suitcase can show you more than you would expect.
Who doesn´t know this German game? Which is basically about your ability to remember a bit like memory. But wait maybe I should explain at first how this works, well you sit in a round and someone could start with the sentence “I pack my suitcase and take with me a book” hereafter the left neighbour responds, “I pack my suitcase and take with me a book and a bag.” You probably have guessed by now how this game works.
Well now you might ask yourself – nice to know but what has that exactly to do with an ESC – and you are right. This game has NOTHING to do with going abroad, packing a suitcase however does.
And this is what this blog is about. Packing a suitcase. Nice one Quillwright! Well, although this might sound boring packing my suitcase for one year was something I never thought about before.
What do you take with you at the end? What do you leave behind? And what will you miss?
And while you start to think about all of this you realize that you just have to pack your suitcase like you are not going abroad for one year but instead a LARGE NUMBER of weeks. This might be confusing but this is what helped me a lot especially this one week in advance. Or maybe it was just the pressure of having to get ready, who knows.
Well anyway while I coped with my small first world problems, I pondered whether maybe the act of packing a suitcase shows more of your personality than you would take for granted. It shows after all what you love, what you believe you need when you are left on your own and how you work under the pressure of having to decide what is worth it and what not. A bit like when an apocalypse would take place.
With this thought I am apparently not the only one. There are not only different packing styles but they also stand for specific character traits. One webpage goes even as far as to say that packing “mirrors your true soul”. And this is not some unreliable source but written by Judith Fein a travel-author. Fein depicts six different personalities: the Worrier, the Consensus Builder, the “I´ve got it” Packer, the Crème de la Crème, the Over the Top and the Eleventh Hour Packer.
I won´t go in any detail here but I definitely found myself in one of those. Maybe you will as well?
Anyway, at the end of the day although packing mirrors your personality and gives you some form of security it never gives you what you really need in an emergency – another human being who gives you some advice. So, all this stuff might just cover up what we really miss and what we think will come close to the expertise of a friend.
