Garbage Cans and Serenity; Redux

another look at a daily battle for the mind

Hello friends and readers. For National Recovery Month this September, I’m revisiting some of my early and not-oft read essays. This one relates not so much to sobriety—but rather to the daily machinations of a busy mind. It relates to my recovery in that with long-term sobriety I’m more able to witness and examine my own crazy thinking—and hopefully make some inroads into changing it.

I’m sure all of you has gone through a similar cycle of judgment and self-check dozens of times during a normal day. What we do next is the key.

Enjoy.

---

Monday is garbage pickup day in our neighborhood. I dutifully rolled the large wheeled can out to the curb and placed it with wheels facing back and open lid side facing street. Just like it instructs us to do in bold letters on the top of the can. This side facing street.

The next Monday chore is to walk the rescue dogs. Their demeanor for the day is determined by whether or not they get their walkie done early in the morning. If they do, they enjoy laying around in the sun inside or outside—like most older dogs do. Occasionally their heads will come up when they see a squirrel and less occasionally their bodies will follow. The chase is on. If they don’t get their walk, they follow me around like appendages all day with that look on their faces; are we walking now?

But back to the topic of the day—trash cans. Our daily is about 2 miles in a big square of long, rural blocks. Along the route we pass about twenty-five trash cans on a typical Monday. I know this approximate count because at least one of the dogs lifts a leg on each and every one of them.

Today something occurred to me that hadn’t before. Out of the 25 identical cans, about half were turned 180 degrees the wrong way—wheels out—against the instructions clearly spelled out on each lid. I pointed this out to my sweetheart and walking companion. She gave me that look that spouses and partners often do one another. Huh?

In response to her appraising look, I said, you know I think that’s why the trash company always has to have a guy riding on the back of the truck. He has to jump off, spin the can around to the correct position so that the driver can engage the lever arm to hook the can and empty the detritus of our lives into the truck. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if all the cans were placed correctly? The truck could move faster, and they could cover more neighborhoods in less time. Or they could even reduce our trash pickup bill by not having the have the extra guy on the back of the truck at all.”

By this time, she was giggling at me. WTF?

Why don’t people just put the can on the curb correctly? I’m pretty sure it’s because most of us are lazy and don’t pay attention to detail. What difference does it make to me if the garbage man has to work a little bit harder to carry away our garbage? Not much in the grand scheme of things.

So as the six of us were rounding the last corner for home, I came back to the topic in my head. I thought to myself that if I cared that much about the workload of our trash picker-uppers that I would simply correct the position of each of my neighbor’s cans as I made my walk around the neighborhood. Would be a gesture of kindness to my neighbors and to my trash vendors both. Did I? No, I did not.

CS Lewis once wrote Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Obviously, I failed his test.

I must admit that my first inclination was to judge my neighbors as stupid and lazy. I said to Ann, I feel like highlighting the instructions on the can with spray paint so that everyone can see it more clearly. I got the same look as before and a Wow.

I wasn’t really upset about any of it. As I reflect back on this moment that has already taken up way too much space in my brain today, I realize that it’s truly a perfect example of so many moments in so many days. Because it’s always the little things that matter. That make us grateful. That make us insane. That make us happy. That make us successful. That make us human.

Our minds are often not our friends. I meditate daily in an attempt to manage the waterfall of thoughts that barrage me, but I hadn’t had a chance to do it yet when I took that walk this morning. Act, react, ignore, move on. It is what life is made of—zillions of these moments in a life.

I still have time to take another walk around the neighborhood and rotate the cans before the trash guys get here. I’ll let you know.