Is Emotional Baggage Necessarily A Bad Thing?

Emotional baggage is one of those hackneyed buzzwords foisted upon us by the pop psychology crowd in recent decades. Next time you visit the nearest bookstore go to the “self-Help or Psychology section and I guarantee you will find as many titles relating to “Emotional Baggage” as you will “Self Esteem” (or pick the subject happens to be the flavor of the week).
Fans of he daytime talk circuit – Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura in particular - can also attest to this being discussed as the basis for many human relations problems. So, if we are to listen to them Emotional Baggage must be a bad thing. I am here to beg to differ on that point. First let’s define what we mean by the term. In the common parlance (including the psychobabble which assaults us daily) this means holding on to experiences, usually negative, and referring back to them in our daily discourse. In popular terms it is used to describe male and female relationships but this can and does refer to any relationship in our day to day discourse. If we are to listen to the advice being dispense by such “experts” then emotional baggage is something to be jettisoned as so much excess weight as if we are in a plane that is low on fuel and we need to discard any unnecessary weight in order to make a safe landing.
My view of this is quite different. In my definition and observation emotional baggage is nothing more than remembering the collected experiences over the expanse of one’s lifetime, and keeping it on file for future reference whenever a similar situation arises. Then it becomes incumbent upon the individual to sort out the data and compare it to the experience at hand, and determine whether anything learned from those earlier experiences are applicable in making an educated and sane decision in order to proceed forward in this new situation in a manner that will reap a beneficial reward to yourself and all parties concerned. Indeed, the successful completion of the present situation also falls under the category of emotional baggage because it too can and should be used for future reference as needed.
I therefore conclude and assert that emotional baggage as popularly described is not a negative thing at all as it is nothing more than the process of lifelong learning. It is also an undeniable fact that if we follow the advice of “experts” and discard our emotional baggage then this amounts to nothing more than never learning anything, that is in especially learning anything from life’s object lessons. Such behavior would result in a person who goes through life totally clueless, never learns from their mistakes, habitually sabotages themselves, never progresses, and finds themselves always on the short end of any deal. Such a person would therefore deserve whatever happened to them because it would be by their own negligence and willful ignorance that got them there. In essence, how would this personality differ from a profoundly retarded person who must be taught daily how to use a drinking fountain or open a door? There would be no difference and anyone who follows such popularly dispensed direction would indeed be doing exactly that to themselves. I now ask, would this in any way be beneficial?
Some might say at this juncture that holding on to one’s emotional baggage and allowing it to interfere and impede with your daily discourse and would also prevent one from taking advantage of opportunities with a measure of risk attached. I would have to answer that this is true but anyone who enters any human intercourse or transactions based solely upon the idea that ALL such endeavors will turn out bad as they did in the past, then I refer you back to a previous paragraph in which I detailed that one needs to refer back to earlier incidents and compare them with the current one, make a determination on how the earlier experience might be helpful in moving forward in a way that will produce a positive and forward looking result.
Anyone who approaches all endeavors expecting them to turn out bad (solely based on a previous experience) is just as much to blame for sabotaging themselves as is the person who ignores all previous experiences. In summary the stigmatizing of “Emotional Baggage” and the advice of gratuitously discarding it is ill advised at the least, malicious at the worst, and patently stupid.