Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa
Waste Not, Want Not…
Over the past several weeks, as we have been busy attending to pre-winter chores in our gardens, one word has repeatedly come to mind: waste. We try to minimize our waste stream up here on the hill. But I was thinking of how wasteful we have become in our relations with one another. I write these words as Israel is preparing its ground invasion of Gaza. Ukraine is embroiled in its war with Russia, one the latter started for no defensible reason whatsoever. Around the world, flareups that also result in the senseless and wanton destruction of homes and cities and villages and lives seem to be the preferred menu options of the day. A day rarely goes by without a horrific act having been committed either by a lone, crazed individual or some group motivated by ideological or religious zeal. It is often pointed out that man’s inhumanity to man is as old as civilization itself. Certainly, within an historical context, that is true. With so much progress having been made in so many areas that offer such promising prospects for humankind’s well-being, our hopes for a more peaceful, gracious world should be brighter. Not the case.
Yesterday I pulled out the last of our fall bean crop. I usually save a small batch for next year’s seed. Normally, I will only hang up to dry those plants that have at least several viable seed pods. Not in a normal state of mind now. I just could not bring myself to reject the skimpiest of plants. That would be wasteful. What preoccupies me now more than ever is the terrible wastefulness that seems to have infected not just us, but the world community. Perhaps, community does not fit the bill anymore. A shared commitment to the sanctity of human life has, at the very least, eroded. We kill, slaughter, vilify and bomb the hell out of one another with an appalling indifference. Heretofore, assumptions of the value of civility in everyday life seem to have evaporated.
My dabbling with beans yesterday, now extrapolated to the state of humanity, reminds me of Thoreau’s bean planting experiment on the banks of Walden Pond.
He looked upon it as a subsistence experiment as well as an extension of his commitment to the principles of self-reliance he so treasured. He made use of all that he could and wasted little. Life was tougher in those days; no tolerance for the sort of waste stream that piles up in our landfills. I suspect one day we might be hiking landfills as well as mountains. Gardens were planted to provide sustenance. No Wegman’s or Costco nearby to satisfy one’s needs.
We have manufactured deplorable methods of treating one another as if expendable matter. We report on hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths as if referring to inanimate objects. But just one life lost leaves in its wake sadness and emptiness along a family tree that might extend for generations. And which could affect those left behind so deeply that their lives will never be the same. We afflict one another all too willfully.
This morning I spread our compost over several of our raised beds. Everything that is biodegradable goes into one of three piles, each separated by reclaimed pallets. As I was tossing each shovel-full into the first bed I thought of the hostages in Gaza, the slaughtered Israeli settlers, and the countless lives lost every day in Ukraine. I asked myself this question: What can I do? I am not sure anymore. There is so much greed, hatred and unalloyed brutality out there that it is hard to know how to react. “Waste not, want not,” someone once said. One answer to my question is to do what I can, whatever that means. I know I need to do more. A noted historian alluded to a need to reclaim the soul of these United States. Time also to work together to reclaim the soul of the world.
Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.