ARE YOU STILL CARRYING HER?

Two monks are travelling together – one older and experienced, one younger and still finding his way – and both have taken a vow never to touch a woman. As they reach a river crossing, they find a young woman standing at the water’s edge, clearly distressed, her belongings gathered in her arms, unable to work out how to get across without losing everything she’s carrying.

After a moment, the older monk simply walks over, scoops her up and carries her safely to the other side, sets her down, and the two monks continue on their way.

The younger monk is beside himself, walking in furious silence for what feels like hours, his mind churning over what he’s just witnessed – a sacred vow broken, right in front of him, by someone he’d looked up to and trusted as a guide. Eventually he can’t hold it in any longer. “How could you do that?” he demands. “We made a vow. You carried her. You actually carried her.”

The older monk looks at him, genuinely confused by the question. “I set her down at the river,” he says. “Are you still carrying her?”

The thing about what we carry.

I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately, and about all the different ways we hold onto things long after we’ve had the chance to set them down.

Sometimes it’s a falling out with someone that happened years ago, replayed so many times it’s become a kind of background hum we’ve stopped noticing.

Sometimes it’s a version of ourselves we were told we were by someone who didn’t know us nearly as well as they thought they did – a teacher, a parent, a partner, a colleague – and we’ve been lugging that label around ever since, letting it quietly determine what we think we’re capable of. Sometimes it’s a decision we made, or didn’t make, that we’re still turning over in our minds long after there’s any point in doing so.

We carry grudges, grief, guilt, old identities, outdated beliefs, other people’s opinions of us and our own harshest self-assessments, often without realising we’re doing it and rarely stopping to ask whether any of it still belongs to us, or whether we set it down at the riverbank a long time ago and then picked it back up out of sheer habit.

The weight of what we won’t release.

The things we carry tend to get heavier over time, not lighter, and while we tell ourselves we’re managing them – tucking them away, keeping them contained – they have a way of showing up anyway, usually at the worst possible moments, shaping the decisions we make and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s possible in ways we don’t always connect back to the thing we’re carrying.

The older monk set the woman down and walked on, with no apparent need to spend the next several miles reviewing whether it had been the right decision, or whether he should have done it differently. He acted from his values, in that moment, and then he let it go – and I think most of us, if we’re honest, have become far more practised at the carrying than the letting go.

Something to try this week.

What have you been picking back up out of habit, long after you could have chosen to leave it at the riverbank? It might be a conversation that ended badly, an opportunity you didn’t take, a relationship that ran its course or a version of yourself you outgrew but haven’t quite given yourself permission to leave behind. Write it down, and then ask yourself honestly whether this is still yours to carry, or whether it’s simply become a habit you’ve never stopped to question.

You’re allowed to set it down and walk on.