Golly it starts young! I see some children with backpacks that are almost as big as they are! Sometimes their backpacks are so loaded with all those heavy books that it is just about more than they can carry! And sometimes they carry their backpacks around with them from class to class all day long. They get used to the load, even as it bends their shoulders and strains their backs.

Most of us grow into adults still carrying an invisible backpack around only now it’s filled with concerns and worries, what if’s, and regrets. The things we are sorry we said and the things we wished we had done. And all of our old identities (stories) are still in there… the shy girl, the silly boy, the one who’s “not good at math” and the one who is always overweight. The girl who didn’t have a date for the Prom and the boy who was afraid to ask her out. The basket we missed that would have won the game and the Award Certificate that misspelled our name. It doesn’t matter how much we have gone on to achieve, that old backpack is still weighing us down, causing us to miss a step now and then.

This is how we see ourselves so this must be how we are, right?

WRONG! It’s time to put the backpack down and keep on walking, leaving it behind. Our brilliant future is waiting for us.