Recycling & Changing the World
Dear Complaint Dept.,
There is a large bucket in my kitchen meant for collecting my family's recycling. When it's full, we bring it to the larger recycling bin outside, which then is rolled out on Wednesday nights for pickup. This bucket is almost never less than 95% full. Every time I try to add a scrap to it, it takes some effort to cram it down, and then, the next time, my cramming displaces some other scrap on the other side of the bucket, falling to the floor, my only rational response being to take the bucket to the outdoor bin and start anew. Except, it's never new. It's always 95% full. The 'we' that brings it to the outdoor bin is always me. I am so tired. Why can't someone else (there are two someone elses) take out the godforsaken bloody hell mother effing bucket? I hate complaining because it feels weak. But also I suspect that I am the problem here. Like, what would happen if i just let the recycling fall on the floor for a day, a week? Here is my complaint: I think people don't know that I take care of them, and how do they live with that?
~Bucket-half-empty, I wish
Dear Bucket-half-empty,
Complaining is weakness and this is the whole point. And there is nothing weaker than being human, because we all have to live and love and get our hearts broken and hope and die and it all leaves us like mush on the doorstep of what we call life. We already have to die, and then on top of it, we have to wrestle with recycling. And of course, its about the recycling and also about the tangled web of all the someone elses that we have to live with. The little things just are the very big things because they are all peeling back the curtain of what is behind all this living and its death and all it takes from us. I’ll never understand the everyday aches and pains and irritations we are meant to withstand. Maybe we aren’t meant to withstand them—maybe its all a lesson in howling at the wind. Maybe it is to learn how to rage and to rage properly. There is a lot of change needed in the world, isn’t there? How else to imagine change than to begin right in our own kitchens fighting with the recycling bin and with all the other someones who also are responsible for the bin and the waste and with what comes in and with what goes out. It’s a bit like caring for a body. It’s a bit like caring for the world. Sometimes we wrestle with that which is not meant for us. What do they say? Let the chips fall where they may. Or you can fight it. Or you can let go. Of course all of these things are just practice fields where we learn to how stay alive and where we learn how to howl and rage and how we learn to fight against injustice and how we practice building worlds we can actually live in. The small things really are the big things and that’s why fighting with the recycling, in the end, will make you the strongest of all.
with love and care and gentleness for all your battles today, may you be fierce in your weakness. Howl away oh fighting one
—the complaint department