May 20, 2013
Off the Shoulder
The first
official Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. I was wrapping up my freshman year
in high school, and, thanks to some community-minded teachers, I took part in a
celebration activity that first April.
In all honesty, I don’t remember which teachers headed up the push to
get involved or exactly what we did to mark the occasion. I think we worked to clean up a local stream
or highway. Regardless, I was excited to
be part of the nationwide effort to improve the country. Mine was a generation instilled from our earliest school days with a desire to make things
better. Just a couple of years ago,
while going through some old boxes, I found a Weekly Reader with a cover story about Lady Bird Johnson’s campaign
to beautify America, so the desire to “Give a Hoot. Don’t pollute.” has been
drummed into me for a lot of years.
I thought
about all those efforts and all that idealism on my daily walks as the 43rd
Earth Day celebrations were being covered in the news a few weeks ago. Before
my shoulder walking days, when I zipped along the road in the car, the
appearance of road crews with their bright, yellow bags, picking up trash along
the highways made my heart swell with pride and satisfaction. It felt good to think that our efforts have
had a lasting impact, have made a difference. The regular appearance of crews
picking up trash allows us to convince ourselves that the problem of roadside
litter has been solved. The up close and personal point of view I have now while
walking on the shoulder, however, makes me think we might be kidding ourselves.
One glance under the trees reveals hidden oceans of trash that don’t go
away. The crews clean up the edges of
the highway, and we feel good about the job being done because we don’t look
off the shoulder.
I know that
some roadside trash ends up there by accident, but too many items can only be
on the road because folks choose to toss them there. Just recently on a side section of my daily
walk, a sofa and chair were left on the shoulder. The two items didn’t just fall off a truck;
someone left them to…what? Such big pieces
will sit there for months slowly breaking down, a blight on the scenery. On my own little street, someone dumped a
mirrored, bi-fold closet door, the glass shattered. The broken glass makes the door both a danger
and an eyesore. Are the trash dumpers simply
able to pretend they had nothing to do with the mess? In the coming weeks as they drive by the spot
will they simply avoid glancing at the side of the road? I’m puzzled by the
thinking that allows folks to leave their garbage for others to deal with, and
I know it’s a odd segue from litter to self deception, but I wonder if the
cavalier litterbugs illustrate the fact that being human means being able to
delude ourselves. Goodness knows, I’ve done it enough.
Recently,
while changing my winter wardrobe for warm weather clothes, at the back of a
high shelf, I found a pair of slacks from my pre-weight-loss days. The pants are the only piece of clothing I’ve
kept. I knew they were on the shelf; they
weren’t a surprise. This time
when I looked at them, however, I had a surreal, disjointed moment where I
couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that these were my slacks. If I’d been in a movie, there would have been that
strange in and out of focus effect to illustrate my confusion. I was suddenly
struck by how large they really were. I
knew that I had worn these slacks weekly when I was working, that they had
actually started to fit snugly. I knew
it, but suddenly, as I held them up with my hands nearly three feet apart, I knew it. Standing easily in one leg of
the pants, I realized how deluded I’d been about my size, and I was overwhelmed
with shame and humiliation. I flashed on moments from my teaching days when I
struggled to move up and down the classroom aisles or to slide into a desk to
sit next to one of my students, and the reality was simply too painful to dwell on.
And maybe
that’s the answer; perhaps self-delusion is a survival technique, meant to help
us humans survive the difficult realities of life. Maybe it’s too cruel to ask us to face the
cold, harsh truths about ourselves and our lives every second of every day. Maybe
it’s a blessing that we’re able to turn a blind eye, ignore the obvious
unpleasantness, conveniently forget our past mistakes, or kid ourselves about
the real motives behind our actions. So
I guess it’s a good thing that spring has arrived, and the hillsides are
leafing out. For a few months, at least,
the scenery off the shoulder will be lush and green, and we’ll be able to feel
good about the appearance of things.
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