Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Making a Difference


Several weeks ago as the snow began to melt, I began to notice something about the road I live on and run along most days: there is a lot of trash along it. We live on a county road and have a fair amount of traffic along it, and for some reason we accumulate a decent amount of litter. Some county roads have groups that "adopt" the highway and help keep it clean, but our road doesn't.

Not officially, anyway.

The past several weeks I've seen a man out cleaning up the litter and bagging it up. He was slowly working his way along the lake, tackling a swath of the highway most mornings. I figured he was working for the county and was glad they were finally going to do something about the debris.

I was out running yesterday and stopped to thank him. I found out that his name is Mike and he does not work for the county. He's just a retiree who noticed how much debris is around and decided to do something about it. (Thanks, Mike!)

What if we did that? What if we picked up some trash every day? Even just one piece?

What if we did that in other areas? What if we noticed a problem around us, but instead of waiting for someone else to solve it, we took action?

The ones that do are the ones that make a difference in the world. 

And they're the ones we miss when they're gone.

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