The Mississippi carries soil from about thirty states to the Gulf. You’re carrying pieces of everyone who raised you.

You are carrying material from everywhere upstream of you. A long river arrives at the sea holding soil from places it passed through hundreds of miles back, and a person arrives at sixteen holding their grandmother’s phrasing, a coach’s standards, somebody’s temper, somebody’s generosity. Some of it you chose and most of it was deposited while you were busy growing up.

Pick one thing you say or do and work out where it came from. Keep it on purpose, or decide it is not yours and start setting it down this week.