On packing light

It took me years to believe the cliché: you really do carry your anxieties in your luggage. A heavier bag is a longer checkout, a slower walk, a thing to guard. Once a bag is light enough to forget on your back, the whole trip changes character.

My rule now is embarrassingly strict — one bag, and everything in it earns its place twice over. What you give up in options you get back in lightness, and lightness turns out to be the whole point.