I went on a same-day business trip to Tokyo with nothing but a passport wallet. There is something strange about having both hands free. When getting out of a taxi or crossing the street, if there is nothing in your hands, you briefly forget that you have arrived somewhere at all. As if you had just come out for a walk.
An attendant in the Haneda Airport departure hall stopped me. "Excuse me, did you perhaps leave your luggage behind?" I paused for a moment. When someone shows up without any luggage, the world always asks, "Are you sure you didn't forget something?"
Around the age of twenty, I once sat by the window in my university library and thought vaguely about this. To become a global talent, I would have to travel to places like China, Japan, and Southeast Asia as easily as going back and forth between Daegu and Busan. I remember writing something like that in the corner of a notebook. Looking back, it was a youthful declaration. But even thoughts like that sometimes have a gravity of their own, pulling a person into a certain orbit.
Somehow, I incorporated my first startup in the United States, and business trips became part of my life from the beginning of my career. These days, I pass through the departure hall four or five times a month. Watching the cover of my passport wear thin makes me feel that my life is actually moving.
Tokyo has been a city I visit every month for about three years now. At first, I stayed a night just to schedule one meeting. There was a day when I had nine meetings in one day. Now I sometimes make the trip there and back in a day. The relationship between a city and a person seems to change gradually in the same way. Repetition is enough to make an unfamiliar place feel familiar. It is not so different from becoming a regular at a café. In global business, this repetition is especially important in many cases. Seeing each other often and talking together is a declaration that goes beyond words. A signal that we are building trust in this relationship, a signal that cannot be replaced.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I ever went to Daegu or Busan carrying only a wallet. Whether it was a backpack or a shoulder bag, I always had something hanging from me. A charger, earphones, a laptop. Even when taking a domestic flight, I packed that much. And yet I had traveled internationally with only a passport wallet. Reducing your luggage is not about getting rid of things. It is about giving yourself the confidence that if something comes up, you can deal with it then.
No matter how clear Zoom calls become, you cannot shake hands through a screen. The moment someone's expression changes. The moment their voice drops by half a tone. The moment they set down their coffee and begin, "The thing is..." That is what it is. Trust is ultimately like a plant that grows among people who have breathed the same air.
An airplane is a machine that turns weak ties into strong ones. If social media and email have increased the number of people we know, airplanes turn some of them into people we truly know. The term digital nomad has been popular for quite some time, but at the important moments, everyone was sitting in the same room physically. When signing a contract. When sharing the first meal of a partnership. When looking each other in the eye and saying, "Let's do it." As we enter an age when AI writes our emails and prepares our meetings for us, the scarcity of showing up in person rises paradoxically. The more digitalization advances, the more precious physical presence becomes.
On the flight back from Haneda to Gimpo, it had grown dark outside the window. Having empty hands is a strange kind of freedom. If there is nothing to put down, there is nothing to lose. I think the fact that I could go to a meeting with only a passport wallet was possible because there was that much comfort and trust.
The plane touched down at Gimpo. I stepped into the aisle with a light step. There was nothing to put in the overhead bin, so there was nothing to take down either. The only proof that I had gone somewhere that day was the light feeling of the passport wallet in my pocket brushing against my thigh.
I thought it would be nice if the places I could go with this light a heart and light an outfit gradually grew wider. A world where Tokyo from Seoul, Singapore from Tokyo, and Abu Dhabi from Singapore are each about as close as the neighborhood café. The day when something I imagined in my head at twenty becomes an ordinary Friday afternoon.
