Cumulative Impacts

Early this morning, the Teenager and I got up and headed out to the local nature preserve to get a couple hours of volunteer service in.  Our task was, simply, to pick up trash.  We worked our way down the river trail, picking up cans and glass bottles and cigarette cartons and socks (who leaves their socks on a trail?) and Styrofoam containers and fishing line (lots and lots of fishing line). We dumped all this trash in a big black heavy duty garbage bag.

Eventually, the trash bag was full and I hauled it back to the beginning of the trail, staggering under the weight.

One empty glass beer bottle does not weigh very much.  A large black trash bag filled with glass bottles weighs a lot.

Yesterday, the Son of Never Stops Eating and I went to church and heard a sermon on the power of words.  I asked him after church what he'd learned, and he said "I learned about God".  I laughed, told him that was a good try but kind of obvious, since we were at church, so try again.  His second attempt was this: "Don't be like Homer Simpson!".

Whether it's speech or glass bottles tossed out on the trail, our words and our deeds have a cumulative impact that we may not ever even see.  The people tossing the glass bottles on the trail might be thinking "that's just one glass bottle; who cares what I do with it?" When you have what seems like hundreds of glass bottles in a big black garbage bag, it's a staggering weight to bear.

This past year, I feel like every day has had at least one "WTF moment".  99.9% of the time, my WTF moment of the day involves politics (the .1% was the day the 6 month old battery in my car died).  I don't usually get political on my blog or my Facebook page because one of my basic beliefs about social media is that nothing you post about politics will change anyone else's mind.  But I'm feeling the cumulative impacts of all the WTF moments, and it's becoming a heavy black trash bag filled with glass bottles.

The latest glass bottle was the "sh**hole" comment heard around the world.  After that, the usual chaos ensued on Facebook.  Lo and behold: the WTF moment of the day.  So much for the gravitas of high office, or the hope that it might be possible to have some serious conversations about important issues. We're arguing about whether or not a cuss word that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap as a kid is "fake news". 

Where's a good zombie apocalypse when you need one?*

When I was a kid, I had a set of books about the Presidents and First Ladies. Dolly Madison was my favorite, although I don't actually remember why.  Even though later I learned that (like the rest of us) they were flawed human beings, they represented lofty ideals. They owned their mistakes, overcame challenges, triumphed over adversity, made wise decisions.  The presidents were like your teacher, or the minister at church- it was impossible to imagine them engaged in mundane tasks like grocery shopping, buying underwear, or going to the dentist, but they were paragons of leadership; they were worthy of emulation.

Now, it's just so many glass bottles clinking around in a big black bag.

I'm glad my children are older and realize that there's nothing to emulate here.

The amazing thing, about cumulative impacts, however, is that they can also be forces for good.  Pick up one glass bottle, and another, and another, and soon the trail is clean (at least temporarily).  Every kind word, every good deed, every act of positive leadership, it all matters in ways we may not recognize. It may seem small, insignificant, weightless.  Put together, however, it matters.

It matters greatly.


*This is my weird sense of humor at work- I don't really want a zombie apocalypse; I've seen enough "Walking Dead" to know I'd end up either as a zombie or as a brain snack for a zombie somewhere in the first week.