There is no there to throw away to
On the weekend, I finally tackled the horror that was my garage. For the last few years, it has been the holding place for stuff in between. In between usefulness, in between relevance, in between new/fresh and old/gone.
Then the horror. Which hurts me physically, even now as I write this. All the old videotapes, broken things, piles of these, to be thrown away. But where is away? Just me, one person, and all this rubbish. And the rubbish is stuff that I know is going into some ‘landfill’ somewhere, along with a few million other people’s rubbish on a good day…to then spend more than my lifetime trying to return to something useful because it will take a gizzillion years to break down.
I felt physically sick that I am contributing to the breakdown of our beautiful world by my ‘throw-away’ life.
And to the continued short-termism of our thinking that we design and manufacture stuff with zero regard for the consequences.
Come on, people…we are surely smarter than this? We have the ability to design art in our products where every single component is considered from birth to death to rebirth, where the cycle of the recycle is designed consciously into the equation.
Have we not learned from our most omnipotent teacher, Nature?… She is always most economical, only taking what she needs, always being sure that the cycle goes on and on and on in a beautiful dance.
There is no there to throw away to. My there is someone elses here. My there is my grandchildren’s future.
My grandchildren will look back at us with the same perplexity that we have when we observed slavery (oh..I forgot, we still have slavery) and women not being allowed to vote.
“What were they thinking?” they will ask. Our children’s children.
If there is something to truly celebrate at this time when the spiritual and physical rivers of life are clogged with stuff brought through our carelessness and our systems are breaking down worldwide, it is this…
That we are no longer able to ignore our small and ill-considered actions. We have forced, through our own negligence, to wake up and change.
Starting with me.
