The photograph trembled in Gillian’s hand. She lifted her glasses in slow motion, and her family smiled again. She reached down and picked up the other photos. Her family home shone in the afternoon sun as her boys raced their bikes on the driveway. Her family room was now the scene of a delightful evening with the five of them cuddled up on the sofa to watch a movie. Her church group, Gillian included, threw back their heads and laughed over coffee.
These were photos to be kept.
These were memories to be treasured.
But she’d never seen them before.
Blinking, her mind on overload, Gillian lowered her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose. The photos went back to their original state. Misery. Loneliness. Neglect.
Gillian opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. She lifted her glasses again and then lowered them. Lifted and then lowered. Scowling, smiling. Train wreck, cozy. Weeds, sunshine. Happiness, misery. Togetherness, solitude. Contentment, neglect.
She took off her glasses and inspected the lenses. She held them up to the light. They were clear, as they always were.
She held up the glasses to the Baggage Handler, her thoughts exploding in a thousand directions at once. “There must be something wrong with these.”
The Baggage Handler sat down and threw an arm across the sofa. He pointed to the far wall. “Who is quoted on that poster?”
Gillian repositioned her glasses and zeroed in on the caption below the sunflower. “Miranda Kerr. Why?” She again removed her glasses and held them at arm’s length, as if they were contaminated.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with your glasses. You could read her name.”
“But when I look at the photos with them on . . . I have to wear these. I can’t see much without them.”
The Baggage Handler smiled. “I suggest you can’t see much with them either.”
Gillian flicked through the photos and alternated between glasses on and glasses off. “How are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing this, Gillian. You are.”
“What do you mean I’m doing it?”
The Baggage Handler cocked his head. “A buildup on them keeps you from seeing the world as it is.”
Gillian waved her glasses at this strange young man. “Buildup? There’s nothing on them.”
The Baggage Handler smiled again. “I’m not talking about dirt or grime. I’m talking about envy and comparison. You’re looking at your world through distorted lenses. It’s how you’ve come to see life.”
Gillian folded her arms in defense, her glasses dangling from one hand.
The Baggage Handler fixed a gaze on her with clouded blue eyes, a look approaching wistfulness. “Look, you’re not the only one who does this. I’ve seen it time and time and time again. A whisper is in the back of everyone’s mind. You know it’s there, and you can feel it. It asks you one simple, infuriating question: How am I doing? So you look around and measure yourself against everyone else.”
The Baggage Handler had zeroed in on Gillian’s greatest weakness: how she saw herself.
“It becomes a problem when you start to look at your own life while listening to that whisper more than anything else. It condemns you, and you now see your life, your family, your job, and your home in terms of disappointment, not value. You end up changing how you see your entire world.”
Images flashed across Gillian’s memory. The car that broke down so often she hated driving it. The family holiday that was never exotic enough. The house she found too embarrassing to invite new friends to. The boys she often apologized for. The husband who wasn’t the cook Susanna’s husband was, the mechanic Vicki’s husband was, or the breadwinner Debbi’s husband was. The too few number of friends. The clothes always three seasons behind everyone else’s. The figure she cloaked at the beach.
Gillian sank back into the sofa as the gravity of the Baggage Handler’s revelation fell on her. He was right. She had come to measure her life by what she didn’t have. What she wasn’t. Who she wasn’t. “Who are you? Even though you’re in a Baggage Services cap and overalls, you don’t work for the airline, do you? Are you some kind of guardian angel?”
“It’s perhaps best if you just think of me as the Baggage Handler. I help people with their baggage—those who want to be helped, anyway!” A sadness filled his eyes. “Not everyone wants to be helped.”
“Why don’t people want to be helped?”
The Baggage Handler stared past Gillian, the sadness now flickering across his face. He gave a deep sigh. “Because dealing with baggage is hard. It requires effort or swallowing pride. Because some people are so used to carrying their baggage they don’t think they can exist without it. Because some people say they need time to deal with it, but that time never arrives. But overall, for most people, it’s because carrying baggage is just easier, despite the weight.”
Gillian looked at the mirror facedown on her cocktail dress. “That’s just sad.”
“It’s also quite normal. In fact, you’re doing it right now.”
Gillian shot a rapid-fire upward glance at him. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve talked for five minutes, but you haven’t yet asked to be helped. You want to know about everything around your baggage, but you haven’t asked how you can deal with it.”
Gillian folded her arms and sat back on the sofa, putting some distance between herself and this strange young man.
“How did these photos get in here? I was the only one who packed this suitcase.”
The Baggage Handler leaned forward, elbows on knees, and gently shook his head. “Oh no, Gillian, these are always in your baggage. They must drain you of energy when you have to lug them around all the time.”
“Are you saying my family is happy when I’m not looking at them?”
The Baggage Handler chuckled. “I think you’ve missed the point. You’ve chosen to see your family through these lenses. When you do, you see them as miserable. That’s the choice you’ve made.”
“What do you mean it’s a choice? I didn’t know these items were in here until five minutes ago!”
The Baggage Handler held out his hands, and Gillian handed over her glasses. He squinted through them.
“Your vision of everything around you is flawed. You choose to see your family through the lens of comparison. You measure them against everyone else, all the time, and that means you tend to see the worst in them. Not because of anything they’ve done or the people they are, but because of what they haven’t done or who they aren’t.”
Gillian teared up as these observations sank into her soul. Thoughts she had worked hard to bury were suddenly brought into the light.
“You constantly choose to see your world through the eyes of someone who wishes life were better, that life were different.”
Gillian wanted to argue, to stand up for herself, but her resolve evaporated because she knew, deep down, that the Baggage Handler was right.
He reached for the mirror. “Gillian, you live in a world today where you’re told every part of your life isn’t good enough. You’ve fallen for that. It’s not a truth that will make your life better; it’s a lie designed to keep you wanting more and buying more. It keeps the whole system running. But it’s not good for you as a mom, as a wife, as a woman, or as a person.”
“Everyone else does this as well, don’t they?”
The slightest of smiles peered through the fog of the Baggage Handler’s mood. “Everyone else says that too. But that’s also based in comparison.” The young man shifted on the sofa and crossed his legs. “Sure, your life isn’t perfect, but it’s also not as bad as you perceive it to be. Life isn’t about what you’ve got. It’s about what you do with what you’ve got. Let me tell you something few people know: every time you point at someone else and wish you were them, you’re presuming they’re happy and content. You’re presuming that what you’re seeing is what the other person is. That’s not the case. You see, those people you wish you were like often look at others and wish they were someone else too.”
The Baggage Handler shook his head. “I’ve seen this thousands and thousands of times. You’re comparing your weaknesses to other people’s strengths. You’re comparing the parts of yourself you dislike to others’ unique gifts. You focus on your dirty laundry and hold it up to their Sunday best.”
Gillian knew she’d been like that for as long as she could remember—ever since her parents focused all their energy on their beautiful, overachieving, eldest daughter, Becky. A tiny crack appeared in her emotional tank, and tears once again welled in her eyes.
The Baggage Handler offered her a handkerchief. “Things aren’t always what they seem, Gillian.” He grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl and inspected it. “You see, it looks beautiful from a distance, but when you get up close and engage with it, you see it’s not quite what it seems.” He handed the banana to her.
The fake sheen of the plastic was light under her fingers, but the Baggage Handler gestured for her to push her glasses up onto her forehead. When she did, she saw the banana peel was dotted with black.
The Baggage Handler leaned into her suitcase, picked up the family photo, and sat on the sofa next to Gillian. “It’s the same with your family.” He pointed to her cross-eyed eldest son with his tongue poking out. “Tyson is a feisty little tyke, but he’ll need that when he’s older and stands up for the little guy. He’ll make a career out of advocating for people without a voice. But you constantly wish he would be quiet.” He pointed to the twins, one in a headlock. “You see James and Alex as fighting all the time. They won’t be the best they can be without that fight, yet you want them to calm down.”
Gillian’s brain fogged. Calm and quiet were exactly what she wanted from her three boys. Those were the words she shouted over her shoulder into the backseat of the car during just about any trip they made.
The Baggage Handler picked up the other photos. “Look at your house. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s a home. Yet you look at it through the lens of what your sister has. Yes, she’s just moved into this massive house, but do you know how much they’ve had to mortgage their future just to keep up with the other families in their social orbit?”
Gillian shook her head.
“No, you don’t, because you’ve never asked. And even if you did, Becky wouldn’t tell you. You just assume what Becky has is better than what you have.”
Gillian’s tears trailed down her cheeks.
“Do you know what else? You then decide what she has isn’t just better than what you have but that what she has also makes her better than you.”
The tears flowed freely now. This young man—this Baggage Handler—was looking deep into her soul and sticking his finger into every open wound.
“Gillian, you’re playing a game you’ve already decided you’ve lost. And your family would like for you to stop playing.” He put his hand on her arm. “I would like you to stop playing.”
Rejection and decades of self-worthlessness cascaded out as her emotional tank cracked open, and Gillian broke down.
She looked up through the tears at the Baggage Handler, who himself was weeping. “What can I do? I don’t want to be like this.”
The Baggage Handler’s eyes sparkled with compassion. “I don’t want you to be like this either.”
“All right,” Gillian said, sobbing. “How do I fix that?”
“I can clean your glasses for you.” The Baggage Handler pulled out a rust-colored rag from the top pocket of his overalls. As he polished first one lens and then the next in slow, deliberate circles, he whistled a tune Gillian was sure she knew.
Gillian’s sense of herself, crushed for so long under the boots of others, peeked out from under the oppression she had sentenced it.
The Baggage Handler looked at her through each lens and then smiled as he handed the glasses back to Gillian.
She put them back on and again looked at the photos. Her family was now smiling and cheeky. The boys powered their bikes down the driveway. Her church group laughed in one another’s company, heads thrown back and smiles all round. Gillian lifted her glasses. The photos stayed the same.
The Baggage Handler waved his hand around the room. “Is anything else different?”
The waiting room had transformed. The white walls were scuffed. The TV picture was slightly fuzzy, pixels flashing out of sync across the screen. The posters had tattered edges. What was perfect before was now run-of-the-mill, verging on disappointing. It was normal. Gillian looked down at the fruit. The banana was black-spotted, and the apples were no longer waxy perfection. She gingerly picked one up and examined it. It was slightly discolored and had an ever-so-small bruise on one side.
The Baggage Handler nudged her. “Try it.”
Gillian took a small bite, and her mouth was filled with sweet juice. It was the juiciest apple she’d ever tried. Another bite produced an enormous, satisfying crunch. She held it up. “When I looked at this apple before, it was fake.”
“That was because that was how you were seeing things, Gillian. Now you’re seeing it like it really is. It has its imperfections, but what do you think of the taste?”
Gillian took another bite. “I can’t remember eating an apple so fresh.”
The Baggage Handler leaned in. “Here’s the thing: that apple always was tasty and fresh.”
Gillian wiped away tears as she crunched on the delicious apple. “Thank you so much—whoever you are—for helping me deal with this.” She placed the partially eaten apple on the coffee table and stood. “I’m going to be so much happier now that we’ve met.”
She reached for her suitcase, but the Baggage Handler stopped her with a hand.
“We’re not done yet.”