Trash Scavenger

November 30, 2025

Pulling out of the bank parking lot, I stop at the sidewalk, waiting for a pedestrian to cross the road. Only he is taking his time. That glitch happens in my brain that flips me from endless patience to immediate annoyance. Then I notice why he is lingering. His eyes scan the ground left and right in no particular pattern, but obviously looking for something. When he spots it, he bends over to pick it up, then holds it daintily like a handkerchief in the hands of an old Duchess. It’s a sticky piece of trash.

The man keeps moving, stopping every few feet for gum wrappers, forgotten receipts, and a smashed Burger King cup. My patience returns, happy that other people do this. I, too, am a trash collector. Not all the time, mind you. I still get lazy when tired from errands or stressed when late to pick up my daughter from dance. But I have this little challenge for myself - every day I try to pick up at least one piece of trash.

The reason is kind of weird, but earnest. I want to make the world a better place. I have many big ideas on how to accomplish it. Many of those thoughts keep me up at night. The problem is that I have no power to implement any of them. No authority. No platform. Just a silly little brain full of hope and curiosity.

Let’s step back for a second and talk about this phrase, “change the world.” It’s said a lot. It leaks out of the lips of school children and politicians alike. And it’s not frowned upon. No one chides someone for wanting to improve things. Young adults aren’t scolded for expressing a desire for change. It sounds wonderful as a goal.

The most common reaction, if not passive, is to feel happy for the naive little creature. “How sweet,” you might think when uttered out loud. The stronger the person wants it, the more you feel a sense of maturity elapsing theirs. If only they knew how things really worked.

Which brings us to the truth about the phrase.

It’s not a problem to have the desire, but the second you express how you believe it can be improved, things get ugly. Any plan is immediately crushed by a flood of political/social/religious beliefs that want to beat your ideas into the ground. It’s one thing to want everyone to be fed, but if you think solution X is the best way to get them food, let me tell you just how wrong you are. Get out the consequences chart; I have some data points to bring to your attention. History shows us why you are wrong. Yes of course there are religious texts explaining how twisted your rationales are.

Isn’t it funny and ironic – we all want the world to be better, but our disagreements about how to do it usually make it worse.

Here’s another twist in the road. What if everyone had the power to make huge changes? That would actually be chaotic. Just imagine that your ideas could be implemented at a moment’s notice, but your neighbor has the same power. And your boss, and the lady who cuts your hair. It would feel like an earthquake on a boat if everyone was creating sweeping change all at once. Life would be incredibly unsteady, but you wouldn’t know where the disorientation was coming from.

So it’s actually good that there are processes. We need order, and roles, and representatives. Those community forums for discussion are important. Elections and budgets and voting on memorandas all have their place. Turns out that anarchy doesn’t have many avenues for positive sweeping change.

So why go down this mental rabbit hole? Because I still want things to get better. But none of us have the power to change the whole world. We can only change our world. And our world is actually very small. Think about the aspects of your existence that you have real control over.

For me, I have my own person, then my wife and daughter. I’m influential to my family and friends. I have a small business with a few wonderful clients that I interact with each year. I exist in a community where I can do a little here and a little there. Some volunteering, some donations, some encouragement. At the end of the day, that’s my world.

Which brings me back to the trash. It matters because it isn’t controversial. I’ve never been reprimanded for picking up pop cans in a parking lot. Everyone wants to live in a cleaner space. And while we’d prefer magical cleaning fairies to do it while we sleep, us adults know it only happens by our own hands.

So when I’m not too late for dinner, I remind myself that this small act does mean something. It’s barely above a zero on the improvement scale, but it isn’t meaningless. It makes my small world a little better. And if all of us move our tiny environment a few inches forward, then collectively we are nudging the whole planet. I hope we can all get behind that.