I’m one of those people who gets to the airport five hours before a flight simply because I love spending time there. My list of reasons why goes on and on: I adore watching people come into cities and leave cities, hug and kiss their loved ones hello and goodbye, watching them smile while they board planes or kiss the ground when they get off one, etc.

So, when I got to the airport five hours early for a quick trip to Minneapolis for a conference, with a laptop in tow and a journal by my side to get some quality work accomplished, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I dropped my checked bag off at the counter of a small (intentionally unnamed) airline carrier with cheap flights and a bad reputation and went along my merry way through security.

Let’s flash forward past all the details of me linking up with my travel buddies, boarding the plane to Minneapolis, getting excited for take-off and landing, to when we went to pick up our luggage. When I packed that morning, I loaded up my suitcase with too many clothes, too many shoes, too much makeup and too many accessories, just in case I found myself wanting them. My packing process is simply me just throwing my whole closet into the bag and sitting on it to squish the seams together so everything will fit. I bring everything along because I’m terrified that I’ll be caught wanting something that was left all alone folded up in a drawer somewhere.

As I watched all of my friends pick up their suitcases from the carousel, I knew that my bright red overstuffed suitcase never made it onto the flight with me. I love airports, I love flying and I love traveling, but I had never lost my luggage before.

Panic ensued and I bugged the baggage attendant, visited the ticketing counter, talked to the airport information desk, called the Denver baggage office, held back an impending panic attack and paced around the airport for about an hour to no avail before I realized that getting my possessions safely to Minneapolis was out of my control. I reluctantly resigned myself to either presenting my paper the next day in my worn out yoga pants and tank top or going on a shopping spree.

An hour or so later, my baggage was found, but I wish I could say that my bright red suitcase had more of an adventure--maybe that it was stolen by the nefarious luggage thief of the Great American West and that when the burglar stole my bag, someone noticed, and they were finally caught red-handed and hordes of luggage were returned to their rightful owners. In all honesty, I have no idea what adventures my bag actually had.

In the time spent without my bag, I began to realize how unimportant everything I packed in my suitcase was: a black dress here, a change of underwear there, sixteen pairs of socks, a hair straightener, body wash. Sure, I spent hard-earned money on all of these things, but would life really have been worse if I was never reunited with that large red suitcase of mine? Would life have really changed if I was not able to change my clothes?American society is notorious for being materialistic and for loving our objects, and I personally love my possessions because of the services that they provide: how they make me feel or how others perceive me as a result of owning them, but they often act as masks that conceal who people really are inside. Losing my luggage jolted me into realizing where my priorities really stand. Why did my wardrobe matter more to me in these moments than the exciting new city and opportunity right in front of me? Why was I more worried about what I was going to wear the next day than presenting my ideas and writing in an intellectual and inspiring manner? Our culture puts a significant value on material objects because in a lot of ways, our possessions reflect statuses, interests and identities, but I can’t help wondering what our world would turn into if we reflected ourselves more through our ideas and conversations instead of through objects. I'm convinced that we could all benefit just a little bit from losing our baggage.