Put the suitcase down

A man on a moving train keeps his luggage on his head. The train is carrying both of you either way.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-08-22 · Nondual

Chapter 07 of 12 in The masters were funny

A man boards a train with a heavy trunk. Instead of putting it on the floor he balances it on his head and stands there sweating. Another passenger asks why. The man says the train is already carrying so much weight, I did not want to add mine to it.

This gets told about half the teachers in India and I have no idea who said it first, which is normal for the good ones. Take it as folk property.

The joke works because the man's mistake is not laziness or ignorance. It is effort. He is trying to help. He has correctly noticed that the train is carrying a load, he has correctly noticed that his trunk is heavy, and he has drawn a conclusion that costs him everything and changes nothing. The train's axle load is identical either way. All he has bought is a sore neck.

Here is where it goes for me, and I want to be careful because this is the point where these stories usually get turned into a licence to do nothing. It is not about effort in general. It is about a specific class of effort: holding what is already being held.

The business runs on decisions and deliveries. Those are real. What is not real is the extra layer I run on top, the low grade managing of outcomes at two in the morning, the mental rehearsal of a conversation happening on Thursday. That is the trunk on the head. The Thursday conversation arrives whether or not I carry it Tuesday and Wednesday.

And in the version that belongs on this page: existence is happening. Breathing, digesting, ageing, the whole thing, none of it waiting on my approval. Onto that I add a full time job of being the one responsible for being me. The train was always going to carry it.

The story does not tell you how to put the trunk down. Nobody in it says relax. Somebody just points at what you are doing, and the sweat starts to look silly, and sometimes that is enough for a stop or two.