Tuesday Evening Musings
Tuesday is trash day. In my community, the trash collectors comes once a week and picks up the green can (for anything but recyclables); the black can for recyclables only.
I'M SIMPLY AMAZED
From week-to-week these cans are full to the brim. Why do people have so much trash? Sure, I can understand at times there could be more; yet the amount of trash picked up week-to-week, month-to-month, year-by-year seems to grow in size.
CYCLES
This is not a new observation for me. I noticed that even when the job market was at its lowest point and people were out of work years ago, the trash cans flowed with garbage. Do people really need to dispose as much as they do or do they need to stop buying so much or are we wasting more? It doesn't seem to matter how much money people make, trash comes as a result of being human and quantity doesn't really matter - or does it?
Excess trash fills up the landfill. Who benefits?
RICH PEOPLE
When I lived and worked in Denmark, Maine back in the late 80's and early 90's, I visited the landfill often with a sweet little old lady who I wanted to help because over there, one has to deliver their own trash. She told me that the richest man in Denmark owned the landfill. I was amazed and surprised.
About a year ago I went to Puerto Morelose in Mexico on a retreat and met a woman whose roots also came from Chicago, like mine. Of course, we didn't know each other but in a conversation with the group from the retreat, we talked about what our parents did when we grew up. She told me her father owned the junk yard and they were the richest people in the country! I was glad I met her because she could speak Spanish and that helped me when we went into the village to eat or shop. I asked her how she learned to speak Spanish so well and she told me she started traveling around the world when she was 16 years old and she learned to speak multiple languages.
I thought about my own upbringing and how hard my father worked for the Union and how many sacrifices my parents made to send us to private schools. We never had vacations and never in a million years (back then) did I ever think a junk man's daughter was wealthy and could travel all around the world at such an early age.
In conclusion, they say, one man's junk is another man's treasure, and I have to say, there must be a lot of truth to that statement! I ponder the question, deep in thought; and now I'm thinking, I need to change my habits. It's no wonder that people struggle to retire in America if they were like me, filling up trash cans week-to-week, year-after-year....
©Patricia Feager 8/4/2015
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