A quick note before I start this blog. I am running Boston Marathon 2022 and am raising money for Spaulding Rehabilitation. Please consider donating to this great organization and support my run here. My soft goal is to raise 2K before the end of January and I am half way there!
Learning never stops! This applies not only to professional life or student life but in our day to day lives as well as grown ups. Even if we are not one of the Curious Georges out there, we are always learning. But then there are simple things that we know very well in our lives but, all of sudden we have a “Buddha moment” and we realize that whatever we knew wasn’t good enough and we are enlightened with an amazing life lesson. I am sharing one such simple moment with you today.
I grew up in a small town in India. And while I was growing up, there were a lot of basic life amenities (which we all take for granted now) were missing. One such facility was trash bin! We didn’t have trash bins on streets or readily available in stores so it was common to see people litter around. I was no exception to this. Which means I am guilty of throwing away candy wrappers and other small trash here and there during my young life :-(
When I came to US in 1999 for the first time, my experience with littering was obviously entirely different and I took that good experience I had in US, back to India. And since then I have always felt like a responsible citizen when it comes to trash and littering. These days in our house, we have our recycle bin filed up more than trash bin as we all family members are conscious about environment and our role in keep this planet clean. I also make sure to wave and thank the trash pickup person anytime I catch them emptying the trash. After mentally giving this “good citizen award” to myself, I remember visiting my in-laws place in early 2000s and putting the candy wrapper in my pocket because I wasn’t willing to just leave the wrapper on the table and got some serious looks about showing off ;)
But one fine day, my feeling of pride turned into embarrassment. I was doing a practice run with my running buddy Vini and as usual I was carrying Gu running gel. After around 3 miles of run, I took one of the gels from my running pouch, tore off the top small piece and started sipping the gel. I held on to the top piece (as I didn’t want to throw it on the street or in the woods on the side) until I found a “manhole” and then I dropped that small piece of trash in there.
At that moment Vini looked at me and gave me the dirtiest look possible ;)
I was mortified! What did I do wrong? I mean, I didn’t throw it out. I didn’t litter but obviously Vini has high standards for everything :-) So when I finished my Gu, he asked me to hand over the trash to him instead of throwing it in another manhole. Note that we both were running but he carried a backpack and I had a small running pouch. I could have always put my trash back in the pouch but no matter how cleanly I finish up my gel, it gets sticky. Back to the trash, I was embarrassed enough already so obviously I didn’t hand over my sticky trash to him and carried it in my hands until I finished my water and then I threw it in the empty bottle, put cap back and then handed the bottle to Vini to put it in his backpack :-)
Long story short, my lesson was that manhole is not a trash bin! And ever since then, I have been carrying an extra ziploc in my running pouch. One for clean gels and one for empty ones i.e. trash.
What’s your “aha moment story’”? I would love to hear yours. Sorry if this read wasn’t worth your time. My next one will be a bit better, I hope :-) But I definitely appreciate you making it to the end though.
