Put your Cart Back

Your Good Example can Make a Difference

As a small business owner who works mostly from home I have been blessed to be able to keep our son with me during the day instead of sending him to daycare. My son is only just over a year old but having him so much of the time has let me start instilling in him the values that I feel will make him a better person as he grows up. One of the regular events that I use to this end is when we go the store. It’s always a bit of a production trying to make sure his diaper bag has everything we will need and singing silly songs along the way to keep him occupied while we’re in the car. But I find little ways every time we go out to teach him by example what it means to be a responsible and productive person.

We go to Food Lion about twice a week. I could do all the shopping in one trip if we waited for my wife to get home but shopping for groceries is a great time to teach responsibility. We spend the time in the store looking quite silly to the other shoppers as we go by talking to each other and making strange faces. But the lesson for the day starts in the parking lot on the way back to the car. My son sits in the cart as most children do with all the groceries in the main section of the cart. When we get to the car I turn it on to get the AC running and start putting everything in the trunk. Once all the groceries are stored in the trunk my son and I go to the cart rack. I always let him know that responsible people put their cart back. More than once I have done this more loudly than needed when I saw someone doing the wrong thing. And more than once they have acted like they were going to put their cart back the whole time.  

Leaving your shopping cart unsecured in the parking lot rather than putting it away when you’re finished with it may seem minor in the scope of things, but it stems from a mentality within our country that says “it is now someone else’s problem and not mine”. This mentality is mirrored within our government every time congress spends money without paying for it, or when they take from social security to pay for their pet projects without thought for those who will need social security in 30 years to survive. When we say “it’s not my problem” or “let someone else deal with it”, we can’t blame our government who is of the people, by the people, for having the same mentality we do.  I challenge you to not only put your cart back when you’re finished with it, but to use a cart that was left in the parking lot the next chance you get. I further challenge you to remind your children why you put your cart back every time they are with you, and make sure other people hear you say it so they might think twice when it is their turn. Putting your cart back on a sunny day is easy, but we need to make the right choices on rainy days too. If we all make our choices based on what is right and not what is convenient at the time then soon we will see our government mirroring our behavior in the choices they make.

I would love to hear what you think of this post. Please feel free also to share any ideas you have on how we can fit little lessons into everyday life. Our children are counting on us.

Make Life Easier

Take Control of Your Goals

Every once in a while we all have those moments in life where our reflection is so clear that even the most stubborn sense of false reality can no longer make us feel secure in who we’ve become. This happens when we realize the goals we set for ourselves have somehow been lost or that we have let our personal obligations fall to the side. I can count at least two such occasions in my life where any self delusion of having it all together was shattered like a cold windshield doused with hot water. But then if I was being truthful with myself that number might be a tad bigger.

I once told my wife that the one thing I really wanted was to look back three years from now and say this is exactly where I thought I’d be three years ago. How is it that we let ourselves go so far off track in the first place? One reason we stray so often from our goals and obligations is quite simply because life happens and we forget to take the time to do periodic self checks. Performing a self check every once in awhile allows us to make sure we’re still on the road we intended and helps us make any small changes needed to ensure we don’t stray so far from our goals and obligations that they’re lost to life.

I’ve been going along for quite a while now without a good self check and it shows in the infrequency of my blog posts as well as the fact that I’ve not been living up to some of my obligations. Externally like most people I still maintain the illusion of being in control, but without a good self check even my external persona will be lost. The reason why an honest self check is so important in maintaining our goals is because without a sound understanding of the external factors, and what I like to call the unimportant important stuff, we will fall into the never ending loop of replacing old goals with new goals without ever actually accomplishing anything.

Imagine how fulfilling life would be if you always met your goals and obligations. The truth is that no one can claim such an accomplishment. But by understanding external factors, performing periodic self checks and keeping our eyes on the horizon we can make our chances better than average. It can be easy to forget that the political structure in our country is such that with a government of the people by the people we more than anything need to have strong citizens first. I present for you here the argument that if you really want to improve our government and way of life as a whole, then the first thing you should do is improve yourself. I challenge you to choose just one goal and make it happen. I challenge you to make the hard decision to not let life get in the way of your obligations. And I further challenge you to share the difficulties and rewards of doing so with your children, so they can see how much better it is to not let life control who you are and what you stand for.

Clean up after yourself

Leave the World a Little Prettier

A messy problem

I'm not sure the fish like it here

Have you ever gone fishing or taken your kid to the park just to be tuned back by all the trash? It seems that some people think it is ok to litter since someone else will pick up after them. I’ve even been told once by an offender that they were creating jobs. But our natural resources are worth too much to take for granted this way. The truth is that in the state of North Carolina, where I live, there are only two government workers that are tasked with cleaning up the park systems from Fayetteville all the way to Wilmington. How often do you think they get to each park? The pictures in this post are all of a park near my home where I go fishing in the summer. They didn’t get around to it at all last year. Picking up after yourself might seem small in the scheme of things but when we don’t rely on the government to clean up after us we send a powerful message. When we clean up after ourselves we are saying through our actions that we don’t need as much control as they think. You might want to live in a nanny state, but on second thought you might not. The more dependent we are on the government the more control they will have on our lives. I for one want my son to grow up with the same if not higher level of freedom as I did.

What you can do about it

How many trash cans do you pass?

So what can you do about all the trash? For starts you can throw it away where it belongs. But that is only what’s expected. When you do take your child to the park try using other peoples litter problem as a way to teach them. Tell your children why we don’t litter. And if there is no trash receptacle carry it with you until you can get rid of it responsibly. But why not take it one step farther and leave the park a little cleaner than when you came. I always bring a plastic grocery bag with me for just that. Imagine if just one percent of our population picked up one piece of trash every day. That would be close to 400 thousand less coke cans, chip bags, beer bottles and fast food containers every day. That would mean 14.6 billion pieces of trash over the course of a year would not be contaminating our parks, streams and roadways.

How I tried to make a difference

Our children can't enjoy this park

Two summers ago my wife and I moved back to Fayetteville North Carolina for a job opportunity. I’ve taken to fishing quite a bit more in recent years and decided to look for a nice place where I could get away from it all from time to time. The first place I found was Lake Rim. When I pulled into a parking spot the first thing I say was that the locals thought this was a car wash. There were fast food bags and soda cans everywhere. I got out of the car and got my fishing gear thinking it can’t be that bad at the lake. I was wrong. The lake was even worse with broken beer bottles, tires, and used up bait containers just thrown everywhere. There was no way I could fish here. I started to get back in the car and drive off when something inside me snapped. Instead of going home I went to the park service building to complain. They agreed it was a problem but said it wasn’t their problem. So I asked whose problem it was. After much debate they pointed me in the right direction and I was off to the fish hatchery across the road. The guy in change of the fish hatchery said he wasn’t in charge of picking up trash either but that he could put me in contact with who was. We exchanged information and I went on my way. Several weeks later I went back to the hatchery to fallow up and was told there were only two people to clean all the parks in the aria and that they would get to it when they could. So I asked about putting together a group of volunteers. He told me he would have to get back to me on that. So I left and went straight to Lowes. I told the manager at Lowes my plans and he donated a five gallon water cooler and 30 pair of gloves. I went to Home Depot from there and they donated the use of a truck for the day. While at church that week I asked my Sunday school to help. I called all called my local friends to help as well. Everyone had something more important to do. I tried to set a new date. Still I was alone. So I picked a weekend and just did it. I brought the cooler with cold water and cups. I brought all the work gloves. And I brought the truck to take all the trash away. But I was alone.

68 bags full of stuff like this

I started at 8:00 in the morning. By 9:00 three fellow park goers were getting their glove dirty with me. By 11:00 two more pitched in. And by 1:00 in the afternoon there were eight of us in all, and we had removed 68 large industrial strength trash bags full of other peoples junk from the parking lot and around the lake. It took three and a half loads to get everything to the dump. I will never forget all those people who helped me. They didn’t help for personal gain or to impress anybody. They helped because there was a need and they were available. I’m not going to say you need to go to the extreme as I did. But just think how pretty the park near your home could be if you just left it a little cleaner every time you visit. I challenge you to pick up after yourself. And I challenge you further to teach your children why it is so important they do the same. Together we can all enjoy the beauty within our park system. And we don’t need to wait for someone else to make it happen.

I look forward to reading your comments on this post. I'd really like to know if you have any ideas on how we can encurage others not to litter.