So, despite the rain (or because of it) I decided to go for a walk today, to not be stuck inside the house. I wasn't ready to resume my Trash Trekking -- the rain pretty much guaranteed a miserable time -- so I thought maybe just a walk down the street for a "checkup" would do. I wanted to see how well my trash-collecting effort last week has held up.Â
So I dug out my impossibly lime-green rain poncho the I first found at a Salvation Army a few years ago, stuffed my journal in the zip-up pouch in front, and headed out.
I headed down Bardwell again, towards the Stop-and-Go at the bottom of the street, the only place within walking distance in any direction where I can buy a cup of coffee. That's my usual impulse for anything: "Hey, life is really (fill in the blank) right now, why don't I go get a coffee?"Â
As soon as I set out I chastise myself. I am going to go buy a coffee. In a disposable cup. I notice last week that maybe half (OK, maybe a quarter) of the trash I picked up was coffee cups. It might just be phase, but -- right now -- we live in a drink-and-dump society.
So, I should have brought a travel mug with me, but I didn't. But -- pat on my own back -- I DID bring a travel mug out with me several times this week to get coffee. One benefit: maybe three junky styro cups didn't end up in a landfill because of me. Another benefit: most places, coffee is cheaper if you bring the cup with you. Apparently, it's not really the brown water we are paying for.Â
I also realized this week that I have a spending problem: whenever I am feeling stressed my impulse is almost always this, a simple plan: (a) go somewhere, and (b) buy something.Â
So I am doing it right now, going somewhere to buy something. Actually, I think I am not alone in this. If we pull up for a wider shot (more ... nope, wider ... nope, even wider) we can see from an aerial view that I am not alone. There is a whole group of people doing exactly what I am doing right now, stress-shopping. Does this group have a name? You bet it does.
America.Â
When I walked (or stooped) all the way down my street last weekend, I pretty much found this: coffee cups, soda bottles, beer bottles, candy bar wrappers, cigarette butts---tons of them---and anything from Dunkin Donuts (its own special category, really). BIG OBVIOUS NOTE: These are all things that we turn to when we are stressed. They are the symptoms of our culture, always on-the-go, always feeling low. In one way or another, these are all pick-me-up items. Well, "pick-me-up" in the absolute worst sense of the word -- the way one might call crack-cocaine a pick-me-up -- but still, it is what we all use to self-medicate.
So there seems to be a connection here. Trash is not just trash. Trash really is like the chalk outline result of all of our bad habits. It's like the pieces of evidence left strewn about at a crime scene. And what is the crime?
Well -- I know what you think -- you think I am going to say the crime is stress itself. But it's not. Stress is the just gun that shoots us, junk-food the bullets. The real perpetrator is what we simply call "daily life." Somehow our society has developed into this terrifying scenario that we all -- insanely -- consider normal. It's like we all live in a never-ending scene from a Saw movie: (a) let's put impossible stressors (expectations, deadlines, restrictions, increased workloads) on ourselves and others, (b) confine ourselves to a small, powerless scenario (most often our jobs) where time is always running out, and then (c) see how we survive when the only place to take out your aggressions is on the people closest to you.Â
So, yes, we are a stressed people. And -- for the most part -- because this isn't Saw, we mostly save up our aggression for later, when we simply take it out on our lungs, or our digestive tract, or our heart-health, or whatever. It's all black-hole consumption in one form or another. I heard a really great phrase recently: we eat our feelings. God, is this true.
We eat our feelings, and then dump the rest out the window, speeding by, on the way to our next highly-stressful, impossible scenario. So, yeah, we are kind of insane as a people.
So that brings me back to trash. Most think of trash as if it were merely an unsightly blemish on a photograph. Like red-eye that just needs some sprucing up in Photoshop. Like if we just picked all the trash up then life would finally resemble the magazine ad it was always meant to be and everything would be perfect.Â
But that's not it. Trash is more like a dark fuzzy spot on an X-ray, a spot that has no business being there, especially if the X-ray is of your lung, or your brain, or your pancreas. It is the indicator of the disease, but it is not the disease itself.Â
But the good news is that -- unlike other unpredictable ones -- we created this crazy disease (the modern-life-insanity one), so we can all start uncreating it. We can start making daily life more humane for each other: we can reach out more, help more, hug more, cry more, connect more, write more, make more art. Anything that gets the bad feelings out in a good way.Â
It is very telling that as a society vices are almost considered sexy, like some rogueish form of identity ("I'm a recovering _______." "I'm on the _____ diet." "I'm on ______ medication.") but when people see you crying -- simply crying -- they never think, "Oh, good for you, you're finally in touch with your emotions." It's, "Uh-oh, better call Mental Health Services," with lots of nervous staring at one's watch and foot-tapping until they arrive. We avoid our own emotions at our own peril. What we don't face we will always try to fill.
Most times, though, the human body knows what it wants: a cry, a hug, a good nourishing meal, a nice workout, a talk with a friend, or -- god forbid -- eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe even just a good movie on Netflix, my therapy of choice. But we need to start listening to our bodies more, not less. They kind of know what they need, they really do. We just need to start listening.
Anyway, back to trash. Try this. Walk down your street and see what you see. Notice how much of our trash is stress-related. And then think about what you do, too, when you are stressed. What you consume. Think about what you could do differently next time. (And if this all sounds perky and annoying, well, yeah: it kind of is.)
And as for my little 0.7 mile street, I got to check it out again today, and grade it. I have to say, it held up pretty well, 7 days out. Not too much trash has returned, which tells me that there is a pretty good return-on-effort: it took 3.5 hours to clean up and only a very small amount returned a week later. So, anyway, I give my street an A-, OK, maybe a B+.
There were a few too many new coffee cups and cigarette butts out there. But I tried not to stress about it.
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Ken Molnar
May 25, 2013
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