Part of the Solution

In my twenties, I was on a hike and I noticed trash on the trail.  What  a shame, I thought.  People drop their trash, they don't pick up after themselves, don't respect nature.  I was indignant and I keep on walking.

A few months later I was on the same trail, and passed an older couple on my way down the hill.  They were armed with those poles you use for sticking trash and they were happily spearing and bagging everything they found on their way up the hill.  I stopped and spoke with them.  They explained that picking up the trash had become part of their daily hike routine.  They enjoyed the return hike with a clean trail and knowing that they had had a small benefit on this piece of open space that we all enjoyed.

I thought about that conversation a lot.  I pondered why I was the sort of person who noticed the trash but didn't pick it up!  The elderly couple wasn't in a hurry.  They didn't have deadlines and schedules to worry about it.  I was always in a hurry.  I was hard pressed to change my behavior, to go from hiking to stopping.  I didn't want to stop at all, just press on all the way to the top.  Not just on the trail but everywhere in life.  Work, sports, driving.  No stopping allowed.

When I moved in NYC a few years later, I thought about that couple and the trail as I was dismayed by the daily trash lined up against the building edges.  But pick it up? No way.  It was just too icky and yet I did see, I did notice the people who did, who weren't waiting for "someone" to do something, they just did it.  In NYC it wasn't just paper trash, there were people, hungry or pretending to be, hands out and quiet, or in your face, harassing you for spare change.   I worried, maybe I wrote a check for a shelter, but I was loathe to give money.   I learned to walk even faster, my head down, moving to my destination without delay.

But I kept thinking about this as a metaphor for strength in living.  And occasionally I picked up a piece of newspaper, an errant coffee cup.  I started to take responsibility, not just for trash but other kinds of messes, to write checks for world crises, to give money for people wiped up by Hurricane Katrina, to stop waiting for someone else to do the job.

When the winds come and palm fronds fall on our Altadena block,  there is that one great guy we all admire that takes 10 minutes and picks them up and makes piles, while the rest of us clear our driveways or wait for the gardeners to come and take care of it.   So each and every day I have to remind myself not to say, what a great guy, wish I was like that, but just be like that.
Pick up the trash and take of the problem.  Seeing problems is a step...but until you see yourself as part of the solution you aren't really helping.