25 kg of hope

The only bad thing about being meximalist is being responsible for your maximalist way of living. And I'm telling you this with complete certainty of having left almost everything behind. Almost everything, except for 25 kg of checked baggage, a minuscule carry-on, and a recently renewed piece of paper called a passport.

At the beginning, that luggage seems too big to be filled — but surprise, it's not. Just two or three pairs of shoes, enough dress shirts, a couple of jeans, two or three lucha libre t-shirts, and bunches of hope, all of them compressed into a travel bag trying to maximize space.

But that's not enough when you're trying to start again after living in a three-bedroom house, with much more furniture than you could ever need. But after a marathon garage sale, a lot of unexpected gifts to relatives, and probably crying because you're leaving your LP collection behind, you'll be fine.

That's what happened to me about a week ago — give or take a couple of days — when I arrived in Vancouver, BC, to accompany my wife during her MBA at the University of British Columbia. Such a great step for us, but at the same time, an unstoppable jump directly into the abyss of uncertainty.

The good news is that we had some savings as a parachute, but more importantly, enough guts to convert that hope into bravery — knowing that 25 kg would feel like so little in terms of your personal belongings, but more than enough when you decide to take your life somewhere completely new.

Nobody ever got different results by doing exactly the same thing. So just roll the dice — or the luggage, baby — and let's see what happens. Or even better, make it happen the way you want. Either way, let's go from hope to happen, and hopefully, happy.