There’s Some Good in This World
You just have to stay long enough to see it
Today I was sitting in the local city park, using my wireless earbuds to chat on the phone with my family — a practice we partake in every Sunday. I enjoy listening, chiming in here and there, and doing something physical while on the call. Sometimes I go on jogs for part of our conversation, other times I do yoga. Our telephonic family visits usually last an hour or two, filled with fascinating recounts of my younger brother’s previous week serving the people of Accra, Ghana, in Africa.
He was called on a religious sabbatical, leaving the United States earlier this year in January 2021. His weekly report usually consists of detailed descriptions of the locals he’s teaching, his struggles with leadership, and the various activities that him and his companions get up to while serving in a foreign land. Everything is different over there, from the words they use, to the way they obtain their water. The differences make his experience-report always one worth listening to.
As I sat in the grass, stretching out my legs and back, I was surrounded by various walks of life — after all, I was sitting in the center of the a city park, that city being the capital of my state. It being a beautiful, hundred-degree Sunday afternoon, there were hundreds of park-goers out; everyone from rollerbladers, joggers, bikers, ice cream peddlers, dream-catcher sellers, homeless wanderers, drug dealers, kite-flyers — it was the gambit of humanity. It was what made the city park so interesting to visit.
As my brother told us about little funny occurrences that popped into his life that previous week, I noticed a grizzly looking fellow walking around with a scowl that could cut cobblestone. The man was growing two massive caterpillar eye brows, each angled in anger above his fiery eyes. His soil-brown hair was frizzled and stuck out in every direction, as if he had just finished jamming his fingers in an electric socket for fun. His tight-lipped glare implied it wasn’t all that enjoyable, but the rest of his appearance screamed that he’d do it again, just watch.
The man was clearly living out of the dusted backpack donned on his shoulders, white shirt shaded dark gray and beige with sweat stains and grime. His beard was wiry and stretched out far from his sharp, gaunt chin. His skin was tanned so dark it may well have been leather. He looked like Hell’s version of Jesus. Starved, stuck, stinking, and singed with hate.
The man was stomping around the lawn of the park, approaching a black garbage bin. I predicted he was about to find foul interest in digging through some trash to find a nugget of food or drink. My prediction soured my mood slightly, giving way to sadness for what he had become. My prediction proved to be wholly incorrect.
He lifted his leg and karate-kicked the trash bin over, flinging empty big-gulps, fast-food bags, browned banana peels, and leftover burgers all across the grass. He stooped, swiped up an empty Dr. Pepper bottle, looked in my direction, and flung it over my head. It landed about twenty feet behind me. The look on my face was disgust, I’m sure. I was also somewhat concerned with what his next move would be, why he had chosen to display his rage in such a blatantly awful way. Was I the next target for a karate-kick?
I still believed that he had flipped the bin so he could more easily sort through the mess, but he immediately started walking toward another bin, sitting much closer to me — about ten feet to my front. He hadn’t taken a half-seconds look at the mess he’d just made. I stared at him, and as he arrived at the next receptacle, our eyes met. I held the gaze, and his hands braced the sides. I muted myself on my family call, and said to the hellion, “Are you planning on doing what you just did to that bin, to this one? Cause I would really rather you didn’t.”
He backed several steps away, muttering a slough of no’s under his breath, turned, and walked across the grass toward the nearest sidewalk. I shook my head. It pissed me off that people care so little for the litter they make in the world. It saddened me that he was living in such dire straights. It confused me why he would display his indignation in such a pointless, damaging way. It surprised me that he would throw a fit like that in front of so many people, and that no one said or did anything. It was now some poor government-paid sod’s mess to clean up, and no one gave a fraction of a damn for it.
I unmuted my voice in my familial conversation, and eased back into my stretches. We were chatting now about how the world has reacted to the current pandemic, everyone going a little crazy. I chuckled, and shared the proof I had just witnessed. A few minutes later, another homeless looking fellow sauntered over near the pile of trash. Once again I made my same predictions, guessing at his gnarly game.
He picked up the garbage bin, reorienting it right-side-up, then plopped down onto his rear end. He started tossing pieces of sandwich, empty soda cans, used and soiled muck, all back into the receptacle. He wasn’t digging through it for any reason other than to clean the mound of shit back up, compiling it just as it was before. After he had thrown his final item, he paced in circles around the area, snagging up other various pieces of refuse, pilling them in his hands and arms, until he finally dumped it all into the waste bin, and closed the lid shut. He even slid the bin back over where it was originally, sitting quaint and clean under a pine tree.
He was a bald guy, with tattoos and a sleeveless tank-top. His jean-shorts rode a little low, and he wore a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. His backpack was just as dusty as Hell’s Jesus’ was, and he had a smaller, angular beard peaking down his chin. By any account, on a first impression, the first man looked insane, the second man looked scary.
My family was still telling stories of all the wild encounters with crazies we’d had over the last week. I broke into the conversation, narrating the newest development in the tale of the angry trash man and his super-hero counterpart. Everyone on the call bellowed with laughter and praised the second man’s actions — my brother specifically stated, “Balance in all things.”
As the conference call wrapped up, all of us bidding each other a great week, chanting our I-love-yous and pouring out well-wishes, I paced around the park lawn, considering my timing. After Hell’s Jesus had laid his banquet of garbage across the grass, my initial reaction was to find somewhere else within the city grounds to peacefully enjoy my phone conversation. But for reasons unknown— probably my laze — I chose to stay put, and resume my stretches.
I had relayed my discontent for the garbage thrower’s actions to my family, blanketing his anger-induced fit across all of humanity. I had even said, “Man, people suck.” And most of the members on my call had agreed with the underlying sentiment. Everyone in society is losing their minds! They’re angry, they’re insane, they’re pitiful, they’re lazy. A whole bunch of they-are-this and they-are-that. An easy modality to slip into. Even easier if I had followed my initial reaction, and left my stretching spot pre-emptively.
But I stayed. I remained in the shade of my tree just long enough to see that there’s no such thing as they-ares. Fake blankets of assumption cast out like a fishing net — easy for our confused brains to understand uncomfortable circumstance. Easy for us in the moment, yet utterly destructive in the long run.
If we run from one situation to another, casting our nets, believing in our ability to instantly know the essence of someone or something from just a moments glance, we short-sell ourselves, our experience, and the experience of others. We paint flawed pictures in our heads of how people are, and we live our lives off the pseudo-colors bleeding down the canvas. We stop giving second chances, we we lose our individuality — and then when we make a mistake, we expect personal treatment.
The world and all the magic within can’t be retained under a single fishing net, or painted on a single canvas. It’s a mix of every emotion, creed, moral, and value — a beautiful, incomplete mess. It’s a pile of trash littered to the wind by an angry soul. It’s the willingness of another to clean it up, expecting nothing in return. It’s that — and so much more. There’s good veined throughout, but you won’t notice any of that if you don’t stay long enough to see it.
