Eye of the Beholder

"I want to work a lot of places when I grow up!"

"Like where, Lily?" I inquired of my almost six year old niece.

"The dump, an ice cream parlour-- I want to be a singer, an artist, a dancer, a hair dresser!" she excitedly and assuredly proclaimed.

The dump ? you might wonder to yourself as you read the otherwise typical list of a very girly little girl. 

The conversation occurred as we were walking up my little neighborhood side road to my house in the early am of a day off from kindergarten. Soon into our walk she spotted several small liquor bottles which someone had recently tossed. She said they were cute and I could tell that she wanted to stop and pick them up but foolishly thought I should make the conversation a teachable moment. 

"Wow, Lily" I exclaimed pointing to the ditch." Look at all the other garbage people have thrown away"--a Tim Horton's paper coffee cup and waste plastic lid, a potato chip bag--"Maybe people should really try hard not to buy things that they just use and then throw away! " I said as I tried to restrain her from picking up the dirty, drippy debris.

She stood there grasping my hand, itching to dive into the ditch, her little eyes bulging with the artistic possibility which lay before her.

"You know, nothing is garbage to me." she had said several weeks earlier to her cousins, my three children, who were visiting with her and her younger sister at my parent's house.  

In her sweet innocence, the world of waste is filled with artistic potential.  "Beautiful junk" was what my oldest daughter's kindergarten called it. And I can understand the delight--being allowed free range over transforming the refuse which no one else wants into the invention of your choosing. Isn't that at the heart of every artists dream of transformation? But I figured at this age her parents might appreciate clean and dry junk rather than what was in front of us.

Walking on I was flooded with more thoughts. The social activist/ environmentalist inside me got to thinking of the thousands upon thousands of homeless children living in dumps and slums; children whose very survival depends upon the refuse of the world. The possibility they struggle for is life itself. 

I also thought of what our little Island might look like in the not so distant future should we all continue to mindlessly consume plastics the way we currently do. Even so-called recyclables are a burden to Earth. It was not a very pretty picture which came to mind.

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
"Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us--in the world and in nature--and in us--in our bodies and in our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace we will be healed and transformed."

What might the future world look like if we could mindfully and imaginatively transform how we engage with the here and now?

The gift of each new moment offers us the potential to make such transformation a reality. 

In peace,

Jill

                                                                                                                                    

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Also for your consideration: the role of and need for a child advocate on PEI

A beautiful junk example which would be worthy of modeling:

Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts