"We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you." ---Mark Twain
I heard a talk recently about a life principle in which the
speaker referred to as the Garbot Principle.
I thought it had an odd ring to it and when I learned that his teenage
daughter coined the phrase, it made sense.
The speaker spoke of his daughter when she was a young
child, saying she never threw anything away.
Year after year, her bedroom would be so cluttered because she would not
allow anyone to throw out her old toys or clothes. It reminded me of the person that suffers
from hoarding. A hoarder can have a very
difficult life. However, this child was
not really a hoarder, but more along the lines of a recycler.
As this young girl grew into her teenage years, she was an
exceptionally creative person. She
excelled at decorating and clever with crafts.
Her imagination would bring a great smile to her parents.
One afternoon she came to her parents and told them she was
working on a project and needed complete privacy in the workshop area. They allowed her this privacy. Several weeks later, she came to them with a
concealed box and said her project was inside.
Excitedly, she asked them if they would like to see her creation. Of course, they wanted to see what their
inventive teenager had created. After
opening the box, she pulled out a Robot.
Their daughter had constructed a robot and it looked eerily familiar to
them. The excited teenager informed them
that she made this robot entirely from the garbage out of the trashcan and
named it appropriately Garbot. They
realized it looked familiar because many of the parts of this robot came from
the garbage they discarded from their lives.
They were thrilled with her creativity.
Jumping ahead a few years her Mother was assisting her in
cleaning her room. Because she recycles
so many things, she often had clutter.
This time something was different, the smell in her room was awful. They continued to clean the room and the
smell remained. Finally, the room clean,
the smell remaining, her Mother looked under the bed. There hiding under the bed was a bag. Her Mother pulled the bag out from under the
bed and revealed a trash bag that the young woman had taken from the family
trashcan. It was the source of the
smell. Both of her parents asked her why
she would do such a thing. They asked
why she would retrieve trash and place it in her bedroom. Her answer was that inside the trash bag were
valuable items, not all of them were worthy of becoming trash and so lightly
discarded. Her belief is that among the
trash were items of great value.
Her Father took several days to reflect upon her
comments. In the days to come, he would
talk to her about the Garbot Principle.
This principle is keeping the harmful trash in our lives because we
believe hidden among the trash are items of value. He explained that even something of value, if
laden with harmful trash can destroy a life.
He taught his daughter that the Garbot Principle goes way beyond trash
and recycling. It applies to all areas
of our lives. The food we eat, the music
we listen to, the movies we watch, the beverages we drink, even the language we
use. He explained that almost everything
that is trash has some value; however, it also has the ability to destroy our
lives. The worst food we can eat has nutrition
in it. Sugar cereals add vitamins and
minerals to make the trashy cereal have value.
Movies with great messages are cluttered with nudity or foul language. The examples he mentioned were many.
So many things in our lives that actually have harmful repercussions,
we hold onto because we see something of value.
I know as I examine my own life that there are so many things that I
continue to keep in my life because I see something of such small value. I do not want to admit that the bulk of these
things are actually more harmful than good.
The Garbot Principle is to let go of harmful things, habits and behaviors
regardless of some value if the majority of it is trash.
"You
may be able to get away with bad habits 10 times. But all it takes is
one time and the law of averages catches up with you." ---
"The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones." ---
