Baggage is good?

No house.  Well... the house is still there but someone else made an offer before me.  Ah well... the right one will come along eventually. 

No time to write much at the moment (just taking a quick break from work)... but I heard something on the radio this morning and wanted to make note of it in here for later thought...

Listening to an interview with Teresa Heinz Kerry today on Morning Edition, what a remarkable and well-spoken lady, she said something that really struck a chord with me.  "There is," she said," a saying in Portuguese - 'You need enough biaggi.”  Translated, according to Heinz, biaggi means "stuff in the trunk" (like baggage?).  So - the saying basically means "you need enough baggage" or "you need a certain amount of experiences, weight, things in your past, etc. to be ready for the next stage."  This is interesting to me because we so often define "baggage" (in these terms) as a negative thing.  Baggage is something we want to work though, get beyond, learn to let go of, come to terms with.  How often to we think of baggage as an asset and something we need and benefit from.  I wonder if this is just a case of semantics or language differences, a deeper cultural difference, or something else. 

To be continued...