The Leaky Bucket Story

 

Seeking wisdom after listening to Craigie

        We were driving home the other night from a gig in Dillon. The interstate was ice and the headlights were fogged, so we drove slower than normal. After two days of shouting lyrics in bars and shooting pool until the wee hours of the morning, we needed some good laughs to stay focused on the road. We turned to our old friend John Craigie, folk singer extraordinaire and his live album Opening for Steinbeck. We have listened to this masterpiece of sad songs and bashful wit easily a hundred times and each time, like all masterpieces, I gleaned something new out of it. In the passenger seat of the Honda Fit, munching on Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, I heard the tale of the leaky bucket for the umpteenth time and this time, it struck a new chord.

Before I go further, this is the tale of the leaky bucket, paraphrased by me, myself paraphrasing John Craigie, who heard the story from a stranger on the park bench in Portland, who himself read this story off a Chipotle food wrapper, and so on and so forth. I am sure that it is a Chinese Proverb or something, but for now, I attribute it to John Craigie. 

Every day, a man carries two buckets of water from the river up to his dwelling. The bucket in his left hand is a super awesome bucket, maybe one of those orange Homer buckets from Home Depot, plastic and shiny, super waterproof and generally a functional bucket. The bucket in his left hand is a beaten up old bucket, maybe an old drywall bucket that has carried nails for too many years. It has cracks and holes and leaks, like, well, a leaky bucket. 

Day after day, this man fills his two buckets of water and carries them from the river to his home. By the time he arrives, the right bucket is still full, but the left bucket barely has any water left, having dripped and sloshed so much during the journey. In Craigie’s version of the story, the bucket talks to the man, because why not. The leaky bucket tells the man that he should retire the leaky bucket because it is just not up to the task of bringing water to the house. In response, the man turns around and points back down the path from the river to the house, as if to show the leaky bucket something even though it does not have eyes. 

On the right side of the path, everything is normal. But on the left side, there are vegetables and flowers growing in abundance. The man has been planting seeds along that side for years and allowing the leaks from the bucket to water the growing plants. By dripping and sloshing, the leaky bucket has contributed much more to the world than just its failure as a bucket. 

Craigie takes a pause for the message of the story to sink it. He then compared himself to the leaky bucket. And in that moment, the story finally hit me. My whole life, I have been the Home Depot bucket. I have done all that is asked of me. I have gotten good grades, obeyed the rules of society, and done everything asked of me by bosses, parents, friends, clients, etc. I have been able to succeed at the hard work of life because I do not waste any of the time or money that I am tasked with carrying. 

But there have always been parts of my life that I feel are lacking. Any time I have sloshed over, I have looked upon myself as a failure for not adequately carrying my portion of the world. There have been numerous moments when I wonder why I am unhappy when I have no reason to be unhappy. I have planted numerous seeds and wondered why they never seemed to grow. 

It sounds corny, but I now realize that in those moments, I have been so focused on carrying the water to the house, that I have not watered any of the seeds I have planted along the way. For years and years, I have carried water to make the house where I am sitting now into a reality. Recently, I started to notice a lot of unknown angst bubbling up inside me; a lot of pointless time sitting around, wondering what I am going to do with myself now. I still feel a strong duty to carry water from the river for some unknown human purpose, some drive to contribute to the world that shaped me, but I have been at a loss for where to carry that water to. Last night in the car, listening to John Craigie relate the story about the bucket, I realized that my next task is to drill a couple holes in that bucket. I am going to keep going to river every day to get water, but instead of just carrying into uphill to water one dream, I am going to see what I can do to grow some other dreams along the way, whether they be secondary dreams of my own, or primary dreams of my friends, family and community.