Seek the Good
If I go too long without walking, I get irritable and edgy. I love the exercise, but it’s not just that. It’s the connection with nature and solitude…my walking time is Spirit time, and where I get my very best ideas.
Yet, here’s one thing about walking – it can lead me right across my biggest pet peeve…litter. Sometimes scraps fall out of a garbage truck. People throw things out their car windows. And at least one person who regularly eats Jimmy John’s sandwiches intentionally deposits trash. Harrumph.
Inverurie is a dead end street to cars, but for pedestrians, a sweet path leads through a heavily treed (used to be) area to Bonaire, where the peacocks in our neighborhood hang out.
I loved walking through that little path, surrounded by trees, with a couple of large rocks and lots of chirping birds and chattering squirrels…until the day I found an empty Jimmy John’s paper bag with napkins and a sandwich wrapper inside. That burned my buns. I started sputtering things like you would say behind your mother-in-law’s back if she had moved in and was trampoline-ing on your last nerve. I sighed, picked up the bag (gingerly, with two fingers) and took it with me to the park to deposit in the nearest appropriate trash receptacle. This happened two or three more times over the same amount of weeks, until I was ready to post a sign on the rock with an arrow: “YOUR JIMMY JOHN’S BAGS DO NOT GO HERE!!!” I began to tense before stepping onto the path…would I find another crumpled bag? Which, of course, makes me just as insane as the person/people who left them there while I carted their trash away for them. In fact, if I hadn’t removed the first bag, perhaps they would never have left the others – who knows? Maybe they thought the city had a convenient path clean-up crew. It doesn’t matter now, because many of the trees have been cleared. Many of the trees have also been preserved, but not the trees which protected the private path both me and the Jimmy John’s sandwich lover enjoyed. Six new homes are going up – two on one side of the street, four on the other. Now, every time I walk that route, I see large Caterpillar equipment with tracks and buckets, moved dirt, long, large pipes, and men working in warm temperatures under hot sun and hard hats. Yet, on my way down Inverurie today, I saw something else first. I often cross paths with a woman wearing something like a surgical mask, except hers are larger and prettier. We always wave and say “hello.” Today she pointed out the baby birds in a nest right above the front porch. I walked up on the porch to get a better look. She is so curious what breed they are; the babies just hatched in the last day or two. Based on what she said, I believe they might be finches, sparrows, or even swallows – I couldn’t tell for sure if there was mud in the nest. My neighbor’s happiness surrounding the newborn nesting birds far overweighed the noise and mud of construction just up the road. I newly appreciated the hard-working men (with great biceps) and homes these dirt piles will become. Yes, it will likely be six houses by one developer which all basically look the same (boring!). But people will live in them. Newlyweds, families, retirees, dogs, cats, birds, fishes…I can’t know these things. I can know the love and delight of a woman wearing a floral print mask to keep out dust and pollen, with newly hatched birds above her porch, positively infects people around her. And, as much as I enjoy the Jimmy John’s “Pepe”…I would rather see baby birds than a discarded bag of trash in the middle of a beautiful path. Which – by the way – is now paved. So…no mud in the winter. A good thing, right? Action Step: “Bad” is a relative term. What is something you’ve found “bad” you can reframe to something “good”? Share on the blog to help us all reframe. If you found this post helpful, please share it with your friends! Authentically Yours, Laura
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