I was fuming. Pissed off at an old can, part of a larger composition of litter scattered along the sidewalk. As I righteously wallowed humanity-hating, a thought struck me: for every 1 person who throws a can onto the sidewalk, there are at least 100 who walk by and complain about it. What if…
What if, of those 100 people, instead of lamenting the state of humanity, just 2 would would bend over, pick up that stupid can, and throw it out? Whoa… The amount of energy to keep a place clean is so much lower than the energy to litter and by orders of magnitude lower than all that energy spent complaining.
And so, since then, I decided to run an experiment. Whenever I am walking and I see MOOP (Matter Out Of Place), instead of engaging in internal poetry, I just pick it up and chuck it in the nearest trash bin: crushed cans, empty bottles, cigarette butts, chewed gum, etc. In two days, the route I take with Wesley (my friend’s pup I hang with on occasion) went from disgusting to a delight.
Simple hack – if we complain less and do more, dramatic change can be had surprisingly quickly…
