Clean Up Your Mess!

I recently took a walk down to the local bakery. Fresh bread is one of my weaknesses. As I was walking, I noticed a piece of trash on the ground. Continuing my journey, I said to myself, “why didn’t you pick that up? It would have taken you three seconds. Look, there’s even a garbage can right there!”

From this moment, I’ve made it a habit of picking up pieces of trash that come into contact with me, because, why not? It’s cleaning up the community (not by much, I admit, but it’s at least doing something), making me more aware of my overall environment, and it doesn’t take a whole amount of effort to bend down to grab something. The only downside is that you could end up carrying something for awhile looking for a trash can to toss it into.

So, this is something we can change. We can change our attitudes and actions as we go on walks. Instead of grunting at trash on the ground, we could pick it up, cleaning the community, making it better for people, and even animals. If more people had this mindset, our communities would flourish. This sort of mindset doesn’t apply just to trash on the sidewalk, but to other areas of our life as well.

For example, if you live with other people, maybe your parents, think of the process of grabbing some leftovers out of the fridge — it usually creates a bunch of messy dishes. Why leave them for someone else to clean? Clean them yourself (if you don’t have a dishwasher). Make it easy on the person that usually washes the dishes. Don’t leave your paper towel on the floor in a public restroom — someone has to pick that up. Likewise, look for other areas of your life where you could ease some type of burden on someone.

Now, I’m not saying to go on trash-picking-up walks, or to go on cleaning-binges (though that has never hurt anyone). Just to focus more on your actions, to notice where you can chip in, no matter how small the task seems. Become more mindful of your actions.