As if the whole world depends on you
As if the whole world depends on you
#96 - A diary entry
It’s been a long day. We’ve been planning, and winterizing, and planning, and winterizing some more. The internet might glorify living in vehicles, but I don’t. It comes with highs and lows, like anything else.
Earth squishes between my toes, it’s getting colder now. I’ll have to wax my boots again before the first snow comes. Voices on the radio said it’d be this week, but I’m feeling more like rain. Time is a better weatherman than I. Perhaps I’ll wax them after.
For now I’m bringing our wind-slashed easy up shade down the hill to our farm’s trash can. I wish we could recycle this tattered material, but the seasons had their way with it, and it’s too far gone. I carried the nylon canopy down here in a cardboard banana box and scrunched it down as far as it would go. It’s a shared bin.
Lately it’s felt like one long day after another, and I’m tired. But winter waits for no one. Certain things have to get done now, as they’d be much harder to deal with later.
I’m ready for a hot bowl of squash soup, and an hour of cartoons before bed. With spaghettified arms I throw the empty banana box onto the gravel behind the trash can after unloading it. And something hits me.
“Treat this situation as if the whole world depends on you.”
I don’t have to look around. I know instantly what those words mean. They mean I wasn’t being my truest self.
In isolation, perhaps I would have doubled down into the feeling of tired laziness which begged to consume me after several long days of tasks. But the whole world depends on me to do what I know is the right thing, even when I think I’m too tired.
When I threw that box on the ground, my small mind thought it was getting a free pass. It earnestly thought I’d just leave it, and come back tomorrow. That little part of me tried. But then I remembered how the whole world depends on me breaking this box down. And how tomorrow never actually comes.
So I played. Made it into a game.
Storming back several paces to where the box laid behind the bins, I lunged down and snatched it into my arms.
“Hey box, you thought you’d get away easy, huh? Well, not this time. You’re no match for my furious STRENGTH—arrraaghhhh!”
Choke slam—the box thuds between my feet, lying helpless. Now I’m standing inside of it, reverse kicking the corners with my heel, feeling my cardboard foe crumple.
And in only a few moments it’s flat as a pancake. I pick the pieces up, shredding them down to fit neatly stacked inside the blue bin. In total, it was only 47 seconds of effort.
And you know what? Suddenly I’m feeling lighter, like the songbird who flew across the waning sun before the night’s rain. Ripping that box apart was fun. Why had I been trying to avoid it in the first place? My heart forgot nothing. It knows it pays to finish what I start.
My heart knows the feeling is the reward.
So next time I use the restroom at the movie theater, I’ll wipe the droplets I accidentally splash on the seat. Because, why leave them for the next guy?
And perhaps I’ll start slipping collage bookmarks into random titles in the book store again.
Because the whole world depends on me making the effort I know is needed. To see what I wish to see.
I am only one man, but I can see the impact my love makes.
With love, I’ll see you here again soon.
