Last night I emptied all the waste paper bins in the house and added them to the black bags full of rubbish to be put out for collection this morning. As I opened the door to put the bags out, along with the plastics and cans for recycling, I looked across the road and saw someone else doing exactly the same thing at the same time.
There we were, existing in our separate worlds, occasionally exchanging greetings when our eyes met in the daytime, yet at this moment we were joined in this banal activity. The bags and boxes were placed with uniform precision along the allotted area of the pavement. The street was full of similar deposits outside the houses of my neighbours. What we didn’t need or want was waiting to be disposed of. We left the rubbish in its designated waiting place knowing that the time for its complete removal would not be long. With the job complete and a glance up and down the street my neighbour and I both turned our backs and closed our doors.
As I am writing this up I can hear the refuse collection truck going up the street: my waste is now gone.
Sometimes we need to de-clutter our lives and throw out the rubbish. But what we must remember is that we must not go back and get it once we have thrown it out. Following the reasoning for discarding it in the first place we have to remember that it is no longer needed in our lives.
Can you imagine the spectacle of running up the road after the refuse collectors and insisting that they stop the truck and let you get in the back to search for your particular rubbish? Mmmm, not a pleasant image.
Yet sometimes, when we have already let things go from our lives, we still try to find a way to retrieve them even though we know that they have gone for good.
What would Kim and Aggie say?
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