When I was young, I heard a story of a woman who lived in a village far from the well. Every day she would walk a long distance to fetch water. Her buckets were old, cracked, and tired; just like her. By the time she got home, the water had leaked, leaving her with only half.

She grew frustrated. She felt like her energy was being wasted. She dreamed of a new bucket, one that could carry every drop she had worked for. So she went to an old man in the village and asked for help.

Instead of giving her a new bucket, he asked her to walk with him. They filled her cracked buckets and walked her usual path from the well to her home, and then back again. As they stood on the road, the old man pointed to the sides of the path. There were flowers; bright, soft, quietly blooming.

“These flowers,” he said, “they grow because of the water your bucket loses. You thought the water was wasted. But it wasn’t.”

Maybe not every loss is a loss. Maybe the energy we think we’ve wasted has quietly been watering something along the way. Something that wasn’t part of our plan, but still needed us.

Maybe the cracks in our stories are not the end of the story. Maybe they are the reason something else, something softer, something slower, is growing.

Maybe life isn’t always about holding everything together. Maybe it’s also about allowing a little to fall through, to spill, to soak into the soil of someone else’s path.

We spend so much time trying to be whole. Trying to be efficient. Trying to make sure nothing is lost. But maybe that’s not how life works. Maybe some things are meant to leak. Maybe some efforts are meant to feel incomplete, because they’re completing something somewhere else.

Maybe the long walks we take, the emotional ones, the spiritual ones, are not just about reaching a goal. Maybe they’re about what happens along the way. Maybe they’re about what we water without knowing.

Maybe we’re too focused on the destination: a full bucket, a full bank account, a full sense of self. But maybe there’s beauty in the half-empty. Maybe there’s truth in what we think is broken.

Maybe you’ve been walking with a cracked bucket for a long time. Maybe you’ve been feeling like all your effort isn’t enough. But maybe, just maybe, someone else has been watching flowers bloom and didn’t know how to tell you they grew because of you.

Maybe your quiet struggle has been the reason someone else found peace, or joy, or colour.

Maybe the bucket doesn’t need fixing. Maybe it needs honouring.