You Can Bring the Egg, Not the Sandwich

Have you ever felt a weight you couldn’t quite name? Not a pain exactly, but a heaviness—your chest dense as lead, your shoulders burdened, your thoughts dimmed by something just out of reach. It lingers without form or language. Yet if you pause—truly pause—and sit with it, undistracted, you may begin to sense it: a faint presence stirring in the shadowed recesses of your soma.

As adults, this sensation is familiar—and not entirely unwelcome. With time, we learn to draw upon the experience and inner resources we’ve steadily built, using them to gently peel back layers of worry and arrive more quickly at the heart of what’s stirring. In youth, however, those skills are unpracticed and awkward. Without them, the same weight can swell into unimaginable angst, leaving us feeling trapped, misaligned with the universe, or quietly despondent.

I substitute teach at a private high school whose mission is to cultivate world-class leaders—humans stretched toward the extraordinary and groomed within an elite framework of entrepreneurship. As I’ve come to observe, many of the students hail from generations of wealth and influence. They are afforded exceptional academic opportunities, often without having chosen them for themselves, and it is largely assumed that they are content to occupy this rarefied space of privilege.

During lunch hour, I watch students gather in corners of the school. For all its diversity, these clusters are often monochromatic and single-sex, small hives of familiarity in a large and demanding institution. One afternoon, a group of young male black students slipped into the empty classroom where I was eating lunch and reading. Seeing me at the teacher’s desk, they politely asked if it was alright for them to hang out and play a game. Their deference startled me—not because it was unwarranted, but because it revealed how early some students learn to navigate authority with caution.

“Of course,” I said. I returned to my book, or at least pretended to, as something quietly wonderful unfolded. All eight students placed their phones face down on the tables. Two of the boys stood, nodded to one another, and announced, “Okay, here’s the riddle. You’re invited to a picnic. You must pass through two green glass doors to get in. What will you bring to the picnic?” Answers flew back at them.

“My sister!”

“Nope.”

“My iPad!”

“Nope.”

“My mother’s pumpkin pie!”

“Nope.”

I listened, absorbed despite myself. Then, as if overtaken by competitive spirit I did not know I possessed, I blurted out, “Grass!”

“Yes!”

Fingers to noses, then pointed directly at me. “Do you know the answer to the riddle?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, lowering my eyes back to the book, though my attention was fully theirs. The guessing resumed.

“An egg sandwich!”

“You can bring the egg, but not the sandwich!”

“A bag of pretzels!”

“Nope!”

Then I looked up again, unable to help myself. “I’ll bring a happy deer.” Another chorus of affirmation. This time, I knew. The room went quiet. The boys stared at me.

“How did you figure it out?” I asked them to repeat the original question—something about green glass doors. Blank stares.

As the bell rang, they asked me to reveal the answer. I hesitated, feeling as though I were stealing a small triumph that belonged to them. “You can only bring things with double letters,” I said.

They laughed, shook their heads, gathered their phones, and filed out to fifth period—World History, Calculus, French, or English Literature.

I loved that lunch hour for many reasons. I loved that I felt included when I didn’t have to be. I loved that eight teenagers voluntarily set their phones aside and gave one another their full, raucous attention.

But what lingered most was the riddle itself. Nothing about it was random. Not everything belonged at the picnic, no matter how thoughtful or well-intentioned the offering. There was a rule—simple, invisible, and exacting. Discernment, not effort, was the key. You didn’t win by trying harder or carrying more. You won by noticing the pattern and letting the rest fall away.

As I watch these students move through the hallways of this magnificent institution, I hope they learn earlier than my generation did that we are not meant to carry the full weight of the world on our shoulders. That success does not require relentless accumulation—of achievement, expectation, or pressure. That wisdom often lies in knowing what is yours to hold and what must be released.

We know far more now about mental wellness and well-being than we once did. I wish the skills of discernment, self-compassion, and emotional literacy were taught as intentionally as calculus or literature. Imagine how much further we might go—how much lighter we might feel—if we learned, even subconsciously, to leave behind what does not matter.

Perhaps the work of becoming fully human is not about adding more to our load, but choosing—again and again—what we bring through the green glass doors.