If people divided up their life stories into chapters, all they would need is a suitcase. Skip the narrative and just dig through the contents. Forget the setting and the characters and the scenes. Look at the baggage tags, the corny tourist t-shirts, the souvenirs and the different kinds of sand, dirt and dust that collects in the edges of the suitcase.

You can gather a lot about a person’s life and what they’re about based on the things they jammed in the suitcase to bring back to loved ones and the places they’ve been. But that’s mostly with vacations, semesters abroad or internships in a different city.

Suitcases that plan on making a return home are very different than the ones that don’t. These suitcases are the real chapters in people’s lives. These suitcases are less about where their owner has been and more about where they’re going. Because…