Two monks were walking along a dirt path when they came upon a rich woman. The path in front of the woman was wet and muddy. The woman was angry because her servants couldn’t carry her across the mud due to the many packages they were carrying for her.
After a moment, the older monk picked the woman up and carried her across the mud. When they got to the other side, the monk put the woman down. The woman continued on her journey still upset and without even a word of appreciation for the monk.
The two monks proceeded to follow the path in silence.
A few hours later, the younger monk finally couldn’t stand it any longer. He said to the older, “Can you believe that woman? She was so ungrateful.” The older monk looked at the younger and simply replied, “I put down that woman hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
Sometimes we choose to carry extra baggage. We choose to carry anger, impatience, disappointment, resentment, or hatred. Of course, we all feel these things at times and none of us has any control over how we feel when we feel it. However, some of us choose to feel those feelings and then let them go while others seem to find a need to hang on to them a little longer.
Certainly people wrong us all the time. Someone cuts us off on the highway, a co-worker takes credit for something that we accomplished, our spouse is unappreciative of the meal we cooked or house we cleaned. And, certainly there are times when those wrongs can and need to be righted.. when we need to have a discussion with our co-worker or our spouse.
But, what about those times when we don’t want to discuss or don’t have the option.. when we don’t want to make things better or simply can’t? I wonder if sometimes we would rather carry those emotions with us just so that we can be justified in being upset… so that we can have cause for our own dissatisfaction.
Or, perhaps, we have a hard time letting things go merely on principal. Someone did something rude or unkind and they should know that their actions have affects. The person in this particular situation being affected just happens to be us and so we have no choice but to be resentful or irritated. And yet, being angry all day at the person who cut us off this morning isn’t teaching that person a lesson. Our emotions aren’t affecting that person at all. They are, instead, crippling us.. keeping us stuck in the past, preventing us from moving forward.
On the other hand, sometimes our emotions propel us forward. Sometimes staying with our outrage strengthens our motivation to make change. We get so angry about the education system in our county that we call our mayor; we get so outraged at the uneven distribution of wealth that we start paying more attention to purchases of need rather than want. Indeed, sometimes staying in our emotions is fruitful and important.
So, then, how do we decipher when to hold on and when to let go? When to carry and when to lay aside?
I suppose we ask ourselves a simple question: is this emotion useful right now? Is my irritation at my boss helping me? Is my anger at my son working for me? Or, am I just wasting time? Am I wasting a couple hours on my journey being angry at the rich, ungrateful woman when I could be focused on where I am at now or what’s coming next?
And then, I suppose, we have a choice. We can choose to listen to the answer to the questions we have asked ourselves or simply to ignore them. But, ultimately, the choice is ours and ours alone.
Also, I suppose, the answer is in the perspective. Is our perspective that we are owed certain things, that we are entitled to them? Or, is our perspective one of gratitude for each and everything that goes our way? What is it to think of each and every good thing in our life as a gift? A blessing?
Perhaps if we expressed more gratitude when things went right with our lives, we would feel less resentment when things went wrong. And maybe then our point of view might even shift from being irritated with the ungrateful woman, to being saddened and concerned that she is so full of anger in the first place.
One of my favorite quotes is: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” In some way, that is the same to me as, “Why are you still carrying her?,” because it’s almost saying: “What’s the point? How does cursing the darkness improve this situation? Why not just let go, or, even better, light a candle?” Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the whole world could stop carrying unnecessary baggage and instead offer up more blessing, more light.
