Trash and the Secret of the Yo-Yo

Trash and the Secret of the Yo-Yo

 
Dear old and new friends,

    Everyday, Americans fill over 63,000 garbage trucks with their waste. In the average American’s lifetime we will personally throw away trash 600 times our weight which amounts to about 90,000 pounds at the end of life! Fortunately, when we die our trash isn’t buried along with us as it would require a massive grave.

    As a nation we have a tradition of wastefulness. Previous generations of Americans thought the bounty of this vast country was unlimited and so lavishly wasted its resources. You and I continue that tradition. Yet it is wrongful…for we should never waste food, water, energy, money and especially time, which always seems limitless unless you are in Hospice. This avoidance of wasting time may be one of our ingrained American Puritan traits, “Never be idle; always be productive.”

    Regardless the source, we detest being idle, wasting long empty hours in doctor’s waiting rooms or in airports due to cancelled flights. We throw away precious time watching junk television or going to an unpleasant event just to fulfill a social obligation. However, the wise ones know the secret of how to waste time fruitfully. The French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in his book, The Little Prince, shared that secret, “It is only the time we ‘waste’ with our friends that counts.”

    Friends, regardless if you have a week or forty years of life left—squander time with friends! Become reckless as a prodigal frittering away countless hours of time in the company of loved ones. Friendships begin with attraction and anticipation that result in investing large amounts of affection since the love feels strong enough to last forever, only for it to disintegrate and die. This fills the heart with the emptiness of loss. About such downcast loss the poet Longfellow spoke prophetically in his “Evangeline”:

            Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted,
            If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning
            Back to their springs, like the rain shall fill them full of refreshment;
            That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.              

    Longfellow was correct. Love is akin to a Chinese toy invented in 1000 (B.C.) BCE. Two ivory disks were connected by a peg around which was wound a silk cord resulting in the Yo-Yo! Love is divine! Similar to a Yo-Yo, your affection flies outward from your heart to another’s. If not welcomed, its silken sacred cord always recycles it back in greater abundance to your heart.