Carrying it without keeping score

Here's where carrying your share gets genuinely difficult. It's not the lifting. It's watching someone else lift less and not letting it poison you. You stay late again while the coworker who never does strolls out at five. You catch the mistake the highly paid manager missed. You cover the section, train the new kid, answer the phone everyone else lets ring — and a small ledger starts running in your head. I do more. They do less. It isn't fair. The work gets done, but you've made yourself miserable doing it.

Marcus had a line for the moment you start resenting what the whole asks of you. "The part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole" (Meditations 9.39, Long). The hand doesn't sulk that it works harder than the elbow. Your good and the group's aren't on opposite sides of a scale.

This is the keystone. Carrying your share is two moves at once: pull your weight, and drop the scorecard about everyone else's. The resentment costs you more than the extra task ever did. Do the work, and let the ledger go.