When I was in college I used to walk around the campus’s lakes whenever the weather was nice. One night, spring of sophomore year, the sun was setting radiantly through the trees, pouring gold into its lake-mirror. It was so majestic it made my heart hurt. I felt helpless, like its beauty was too much, that I had to do something about it, but I didn’t know what.

I looked down, and at my feet was a little pile of trash, gently bobbing against the shore. Pepsi cans, sandwich bags, a plastic fork. Someone’s carelessness, a smudge on a perfect canvas.

Later, I described the scene to a friend.

“And you know what?” I said, before he could start bemoaning the evils of littering. I was realizing this next thing as I said it: “I’m glad there was garbage, because otherwise it would’ve been too perfect. It almost hurt to look at, and the trash made it hurt less.”

For a second I thought he might launch into a diatribe about pollution and social responsibility. Instead, he paused, then said, “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

—

Why has that moment stayed with me? Why does it pop up now, 16 years later, when my mind wanders? Surely there are more course-altering events that should come to mind first. And sometimes they do. But this one continues to resonate in its simplicity, to unfold like a flower that blooms again and again, revealing layer after layer of new meaning.

At first, the garbage let me off the hook; it gave me permission to not fully feel something that felt too big.

Then, it was a portal to discovering something new. I wouldn’t have thought I could feel anything but disgust, or apathy, toward litter. Certainly not gratitude.

Then, it was a bridge between two people, finding that things are not what they expect.

Then, it became a challenge: what to do when faced with a powerful emotion and there IS no garbage around, nothing to soften or diminish or declaw it?

It has become a measure of emotional growth. Now I know I’ve grown when I can see transcendent beauty and not look around for litter.

When I can feel something big and not try to change it.

When I can accept that garbage in a lake can be as much a portal to new discovery as the beauty it besmirches. Maybe more so.

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