How to deal with your trash?

The best way to deal with trash is to learn to ignore it. Second best way is to try and clean, it is messier, and will make you dirty.

Ok, I confess. I am not good with trash. I think most of us are not. That is why the Great garbage patch is keep getting bigger in the middle of Pacific Ocean. I have been thinking about this problem when I started to share some posts on FB. Not all of them were appealing to everyone. As some of them were infact controversial. Things like "Ego is the biggest hindrance to understanding second only to lack of information." Some, did not take this pleasantly, even making angry comments. Looks like trash talk to me. And I had two options to deal with this kind of trash. Either I could just ignore or try to make them realise in which aspects their arguments were wrong. Guess which pathway I took. It made me realise its just like dealing with physical garbage.

Picking up trash

When dealing with physical garbage, it seems like removing, recycling is the option we should take. As it makes sense. We can make natural fertiliser, or reuse plastic or metal. But first we have to remove them from our house and backyard. If not they will start to stink. And the place would soon become inhabitable. But, the question is why we cannot ignore?

Now reading following passage you should not look at me like a mad man. As it is only a philosophical argument. It is unhealthy to live with garbage and no sane human is supposed to do that. But for the argument to work, let's say you have no nose, and you do not get sick of garbage. Let's say naturally you have immunity to garbage. In this scenario, unless it interfere with your work, best way to deal with it is ignore it. Just like what I did with trash FB comments. There is no point even trying to remove trash as it's not just worth your effort. Infact, everything which doesn't stink, and rotten and messy, we do this. We just leave them alone, although they serve no purpose, they will not be labelled as garbage.

This article is not giving advice to how to manage garbage. But provide you wisdom how to manage your mental garbage. Similar to I am not going to listen or even respond to trash talk, when we look at ourselves we see not everything going through mind is positive. Some are just trash. And you already know what is the best response when the mind starts trash talking. That is to ignore. Trying to counteract these with positive or even opposite thoughts can make it messy. Just letting them run it's course with awareness would just make them last no more than their lifetime.

Ignoring trash.

More importantly we should know why trash became trash in the first place. What is the difference between trash and unused television in your garage. Or when does a television becomes trash? Obviously it's not when it started not working for the first time. It is when you decide it has no more use. And hindered the space which can be used for some other valueble item. I call this having a "negative value" as you need it gone. Similarly there are some negative values that we do not want in our lives. Sadness, anger, anxiety, stress are some. Just like a TV, the problem is not with the trash, it is our attitude of not wanting that creates uneasiness and suffering.

So, with this intuition I can say that still, the best way of dealing with trash is to learn to ignore, if can. And second best way is try and correct it. Let's try both and see.