A mixed bag.

4AM - San Antonio International Airport

¨Your bags are overwieght.¨ the Airline rep told Katie and I at the Continental counter.

We knew they would be. We were ready to pay.

¨Okay. So how much extra is it going to cost?¨ I asked, impatiently tapping my credit card on the counter top. I was still kinda sad about saying goodbye to my family.

¨No. Your bags are overwieght. Overweight bags aren´t allowed on the flight you´re taking.¨

¨What?¨

¨You cannot take bags weighing over fifty pounds to Lima,¨ the rep rephrased it.

¨So...what do we do?¨ I asked, already suspecting the answer.

She raised an eyebrow, leaned over her computer to look at our bags and bluntly gave her suggestion:

¨Take stuff out.¨

As we stood off to the side of the ticketing line, our bags flung open, digging through all the stuff we thought we´d need, deciding what we could and couldn´t live without, I couldn´t help but smile at Katie, the ¨this-is-going-to-be-a-funny-story...later¨ smile.

I had to give up mostly all of my books, a pair of shoes and some clothes. Katie gave up some clothes and a lot of her toiletries with the hope that she´d be able to find replacements once we arrived.

She told me later as we sat on the taxiing airplane, ¨There counldn´t have been a better way to begin a journey about living simply.¨

and I couldn´t have agreed more.

We were forced to ask ourselves, ¨Okay, what is it that we really need?¨

Thanks to Jelly who was able to come back to the airport and pick up our stuff, there´s hope that one day we might see our orphaned stuff again. But we found ourselves asking, ¨Did we really need the things we gave up after all?¨

Think about the things that you think you can´t live without. I bet you´d be surprised at what you´d be able to give up if you had to.

...and in our case, what we really needed (like patience and sense of humor) wasn´t even in our bags at all.