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A few months ago, in the midst of the national fervor over President Biden’s debate performance, I was in a pretty terrible mood listening to it all and decided to take a long walk through D.C.
I put on some sunscreen, popped in my earbuds with a good playlist, and took a stroll around town, about an hour later finding myself on a residential street.
As I was wandering down the sidewalk, I saw a cyclist approaching from the opposite direction pretty fast and carrying a 7/11 Big Gulp in one hand, his other paw on the handle bar.
Before I could process my curiosity over the balance and hand-eye coordination it takes to do that, he tossed the cup, underhand, in a high arc, right onto the grass divider between the street and the sidewalk.
He had passed by a public trash can not thirty yards away at the intersection. He simply decided to deposit his garbage there, on the grass, and let someone else clean it up for him.
Like I said, I was already in a bad mood, and this just pissed me right off. I was also stunned because who the hell does that? Without really thinking, I tried shouting something, but all that came out was a weak, anger-tinged “Hey!”
He heard me, and without turning his head around, tossed up his right middle finger, formerly holding up the Big Gulp, and sped away.
So, now, I felt both angry and ridiculous for saying something, and then I felt angry at myself for feeling ridiculous for saying something.
Did I mention I was in a terrible mood and the whole point of this walk in the D.C. summer heat was to reset and clear my head?
I took a few moments to calm down. I told myself that I was probably making way too much out of the actions of this dorkass, inconsiderate weirdo, and then, I walked over and picked up the ice-rattling Big Gulp and threw it in the trash.
I was still incredibly annoyed, but if I can be emotionally undone by some random, littering clown, isn’t that on me? That’s what I told myself, anyway.
A week-and-a-half later, my friend Gautam invited me to a matinee showing of “Funny Girl” at the Kennedy Center, a much needed reprieve from the never-ending hell that had become July. It was fantastic. We had a great time. I felt better than I had in weeks.
I walked for several blocks after the show and decided to call a ride home. While I was sitting in the outside section of a restaurant on that street and waiting, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a woman slowly making her way down the sidewalk.
She was wearing a floppy hat and carrying a trash bag and a litter picker (there are, apparently, many names for this device, but I’m going with that one). I watched as she meticulously made her way down the sidewalk, grabbing every bit of trivial debris she could find and tossing it in the bag.
She was clearly focused on her task of cleaning the street, and I didn’t wanna interrupt but my curiosity got the better of me.
“Excuse me, Ma’am, can I ask: are you with an organization?”
There were probably more elegant ways to inquire, but my sleep-deprived brain was doing the best it could.
She looked up at me, offered a kind (and perhaps bemused) smile, and said: “Nope, this is just something I like to do.”
Ah.
“Well, thank you for doing that,” I replied. “I hope you have a lovely day.”
“Of course! You have a lovely day, too.”
My ride pulled up a moment later. On the way home, as I sat in the backseat, I couldn’t help but regret letting myself get angry at Trash Cyclist a few weeks prior, allowing, even for a second, someone that uncaring to get to me. What a waste of my emotional energy.
Our country has always had people like Trash Cyclist, folks who have given up on moving through the world with empathy and consideration for those around them, people whose chronic nihilism has metastasized into the public square and everyone around them is forced to clean up their mess.
That’s the uncharitable take, of course.
Maybe the charitable take is that Trash Cyclist was having a bad day, too. Maybe tossing his garbage on the street and flipping off a complaint was uncharacteristic. Maybe his life sucks right now because the world hasn’t shown much consideration and empathy for him.
That’s possible. I don’t personally know the guy. Perhaps if I ever got to know him, I’d learn that he’s got a lot of pain inside from any number of unfair things life has thrown his way and has no idea how to deal with it and tossing a Big Gulp in the street like a complete dillweed is his response.
It ain’t likely, mind you, but I can’t deny that’s possible.
But the thing is: when I felt enraged that day, furious at our political environment and then taking out my anger on this dipstick-on-wheels for throwing his trash on the sidewalk, I made choices myself. I chose to get angry. I chose to remain annoyed.
Sure, I threw away the cup, which took all of ten seconds, but I could have made the choice to get a trash bag and clean up that whole sidewalk myself. It wouldn’t have taken long, maybe ten minutes total.
I could have done something kind and thoughtful in response to something maybe done out of hurt. It probably would have made me feel better.
But I didn’t make that choice.
No one asked that woman in the floppy hat to spend her afternoon cleaning up the sidewalks in her neighborhood as an unappreciated public service. She simply chose to do it because it needed to be done, and it made her feel better.
I think we’re living through a time in which it’s much easier for us to decide that the world sucks and society is exhausting and why even bother? It may not manifest in tossing our garbage in the streets, but maybe it does manifest when we let that distract us to anger rather than service to each other.
I think there’s often a great courage in consistently centering an imperative to serve others we don’t know, especially when it’s thankless. I admit it’s not a quality I’ve yet mastered.
I promise these two individuals are not shoehorned stand-ins for Vice President Harris and Trump. I don’t know the respective politics of the Lady in the Floppy Hat and the Trash Cyclist. They’re complete strangers, and I only saw them both in mere snapshots of their lives.
But I do think that conscious effort to serve others, to do something for the greater good as an antidote for existing mess, an often thankless approach, is magnificently embodied by Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz.
I think if they’re consistently doing that and I’m not, when I certainly have the time and space to do so, any grievances I have over our national community maybe don’t hold as much water as I’d like to think.
Maybe I need to carry a folded-up trash bag with me on those long walks and do something about it.
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