PREFACE

Why Did We Redo It Again?

The world told us it was time for another edition of this book.

We knew the concept of Repacking Your Bags had really arrived when Hollywood got in on the act.

In the 2009 critically-acclaimed film, Up in the Air, superstar actor George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert who gives motivational speeches on relieving one’s life of excess physical and emotional baggage, using the metaphor of unpacking and repacking one’s “backpack.”

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Plagiarism? Well, we admit it crossed our minds.

But probably the best explanation is that the collective consciousness, or what is sometimes referred to as the “zeitgeist” has, over time, firmly embraced the Repacking concept.

In the years since 1994 when Repacking Your Bags was first published and 1999 when the second edition came out, we have witnessed the emergence of Repacking as a true cultural phenomenon.

Back in the day — the waning years of the 20th century, that is — the ability to “repack,” or systematically take stock of one’s life and develop an authentic, individualized conception of the good life — was essentially an option, mainly for middle-aged people who had achieved a modicum of success in their personal and professional lives. Now, however, well into the second decade of the 21st century, it is an imperative, for men and women at all ages and stages. Repacking is an essential survival skill, one required of young job-seekers, midlife career changers, and older adults facing their own challenging transitions to life in a new post-work world.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 marked a transformation for people not only in the United States, but around the world. Since then, more than ever before, men and women, young and old, are desperate to make sense of their lives. Ironically, more than ever before, people are finding that sense elusive.

Technological advances, major economic shifts, longer life spans, and new attitudes toward aging are revolutionizing the way we live and work. These revolutionary changes are prompting people to ask questions that cut to the core of who we are, individually and as a society.

People feel worn out by overwhelming responsibilities and non-stop changes. We’re exhausted — weighed down by shouldering too heavy a load at work, in relationships, and in our communities.

Above all, people have misplaced their sense of fun and play, their native curiosity, their feeling of wonder about the world. Too many of us aren’t happy — or at least not as happy as we’d like to be. More and more of us feel a sense of disconnectedness with our work, our relationships, and a deep experience of something larger than ourselves.

The good news is we are all essentially hard-wired to find those connections. We just need a framework, or guidance system, to do so. This new version of Repacking Your Bags provides that guidance system, and does so in a way that encourages our natural sense of play and wonder, inspiring us all for the journey ahead.

Countless changes have occurred in the seventeen years since the release of the first edition of Repacking. Back in 1994, for instance, hardly anyone we knew had a cell phone, and the internet was still mainly a playground for high-tech geeks. Now, of course, few among us can imagine life without these tools.

The working world has changed radically, too. Lifelong employment at a single company, back then, was still pretty much the norm — or at least the ideal — for most people. Now it’s as quaint a business notion as the secretarial typing pool. Globalization has gone from being a visionary buzzword to a fact of life for companies everywhere. In fact, it is so ingrained that it is a target of protest by people seriously questioning the meaning and purpose of today’s corporations. Financial crisis has become the “new normal.” Millions of people have been downsized, upsized, rightsized, and resized as gyrations in the marketplace continue to buffet companies and organizations of every size.

In our own lives, the changes, though smaller, have been scarcely less dramatic. Both of us, upon completing the first edition of Repacking, made a conscious choice to dramatically reconfigure our personal and professional lives in an effort to more fully realize our vision of the good life: Living in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work, on purpose.

And following the release of the second edition of Repacking, we have continued to evaluate and re-evaluate our lives with those four areas in mind. We’ve both been persistently repacking as needed, to pursue the good life as each of us sees it.

Richard restructured his corporate coaching practice to focus more on writing and speaking. Dave finished his stint as a graduate student in philosophy, and is now a tenured college instructor in his chosen field. Richard, who had initially responded to his renewed sense of place by relocating to a rural home on the banks of the St. Croix River, also found he sometimes belonged at a small pied à terre condo nearer to his office in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Dave bought a house, something for years he had vowed he would never do.

Even our purposes continue to be revised and revitalized. Richard, who had originally defined his purpose as “to help people discover and express their essence,” and later, more simply as “uncovering callings,” has now repacked his purpose as “awakening spirit.” In other words, he now envisions his life’s purpose as empowering others to develop a vision of their life’s purpose. Dave, who had seen himself primarily as a writer, and then mainly as a professional academic philosopher, now conceives his purpose in terms of teaching and facilitating educational experiences with young people. He defines it, in terms of a calling, as “fostering dialogue.”

Throughout our changes we have found ourselves again and again still unpacking; still reflecting on who we are and why. Still looking over what we’re carrying, and asking ourselves if we still need it for the journey ahead.

At each crossroad, we have examined our lives and our options in light of the lessons of Repacking. We have wondered what we needed to make ourselves happy: what to bring along and what to leave behind, what to acquire and what to give away, what to do and with whom to do it.

Individually we experienced the joys and challenges of repacking: the struggles to figure out what really matters, and the sense of liberation that comes from making choices that express who we really are in our personal and professional lives. We also heard from literally thousands of readers who had repacked their own bags and now wanted to share stories of their challenges and triumphs along the way.

As we noted in the second edition of Repacking, one of the most compelling lessons that emerged for us is that the process is not something that happens once and is done with. It’s an experience that stays with you, that stimulates thinking and inspires ongoing reflection.

What has come home to us even more clearly is how much we underestimated the value and imperative of continually repacking. It is not, as we once imagined, a matter of mid-course corrections. Rather, repacking is a navigational imperative. None of us can get where we hope to without frequently reconsidering where we’re going and how to get there.

We’ve come to understand that repacking is a lifelong process. We need to be continually engaged in it so as to stay vital, fully alive in the present, and hopeful for the future.

We had originally thought of repacking as something people do once (or at most, a couple of times) in reaction to a sense of disillusionment or frustration in their lives. Now we understand it much more clearly as a proactive process. We’ve found that with each step along the way it remains necessary to re-examine what has brought us here, to continue asking ourselves if the choices that have sustained us so far are continuing to do so — or if they’re just weighing us down.

And while this does entail a deep questioning, it’s a kind of questioning we’ve found that we can’t really live without — not if we want to feel alive.

As we approach this revision of Repacking, we are no longer young; indeed, we have both entered the “country of old men.” Dave is well into his fifties and Richard qualified for Medicare almost five years ago. We are both card-carrying members of AARP. And yet both of us still feel young — especially in two ways.

First, we share a sense of vitality that seems to come from a willingness to reimagine our lives. And second, we feel young in the sense of not really knowing, or claiming to know. We realize, as a result of our own repackings, that life still is, and will always be, a process of discovery. It has become more obvious to us than ever that repacking is not essentially about reaching the destination, but about the learning journey.

We are reminded that the keys to this discovery process lie within us. To feel fully alive we must repeatedly turn our gaze inward. To know where we are on the trip, where we want to go, and how to get there, we must learn to count on an inner sense of direction.

Quite simply, we must continually unpack and repack our bags.

“Unpacking” simply means taking a long, hard look at what we’re carrying and why. Seeing if our possessions, relationships, purpose and work are still helping us move forward, or if they’re weighing us down.

“Repacking,” then, is the ongoing and continuous activity of reflection and choice. Rearranging our priorities. Reframing our vision of the good life. And recovering a new sense of being alive.

This book was originally written as a chronicle of our own repacking. This revision revisits that chronicle and expands upon it by referencing unpacking and repacking episodes that have emerged in the years since. In the nearly two decades since Repacking first came out, we’ve often been enlightened — but more often, humbled — by others’ experiences with it. As a result, and due, in part, to our ongoing efforts to repack our own bags, we both think we’ve developed a further understanding of the good life and how to go about attaining it.

We offer this revised chronicle as the current version of a guidebook to the future for our fellow travelers. May it help you lighten your step on the road to the good life.