Boy, You're Gonna Carry That Weight?

Passed a homeless guy yesterday. His shopping cart was overloaded with trash – scraps of plastic, chunks of cardboard – not even recyclable. Trash. My thought was that this was an element of his insanity, to value junk that has no value, and that this was how he ended up where he is – holding on to things without value, and having no room in the cart for things of real value. Maybe it all began because he valued a drug more than his vocation, his family, his home. Speculation. Today, whatever his other addictions, his addiction is to refuse, and his identity is aligned with a small hill of garbage.

Then the mental finger pointed back at myself, and I thought of all the trashy things that I pick up and add to the valueless heap on my shopping cart. No time for conversation with my kids, I have to vegetate on this trashy movie – adding laziness and isolation to the lowest level of my cart. Instead of taking the time to make something good to eat, reaching for something tasty and processed-easy and valueless nutritionally - add that to the waistline of the cart. Atop, scraps of old scripts of “how it happened and why and why me.” Stuff these old traumas and misunderstandings into little spare spaces, letting my offended ego treasure them instead of trash them.

I get lazy or angry or dejected, and I find junk appealing. My hands pick it up, and my head holds it all. Besides the event itself, or the memory of the event, I add an additional layer of insular laziness and anger to my cart. And then, the cart is welded to my hands, and pushing it becomes my identity, my character aligned with my trash.

Again, time to take stock. Roll the cart over to the soulical dumpster and leave some of this refuse where it should have landed long ago. Make room in the cart for what really matters. Empty it and only put in what I want to carry going forward.