The Trash Compactor: Stuffing it all and calling it a life

An alternative to stuffing our feelings and moving on too quickly

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

I’d so love a “one on one” with you about my poem, “The Trash Compactor.” But this is why I write on Substack—to try to have a conversation about what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about all the trash I’m filling my soul with and what I can do about it.

Now that I’ve raised the issue and given you an image to look at—the trash can overflowing with all of the stuff, let me keep going for a moment and see where this might lead.

Let me tell you of a few things I’m stuffing at the moment…

Well, just this week, I’ve put political trash into mine—the AI generated video of the President of the United States personal vision for the rebuilding of Gaza with the golden image of himself in front of the gold casino and the hue of a golden hotel; and money falling from heaven while sitting on the beach. Well, what is trash to me, might not be trash to you. I get that… But allow me to keep going for another moment.

Stuffed. Crammed in. Not sure what to do with that. But, somehow, it doesn’t fit well with me. No time to really process that, because next came the Oval office meeting that went off the rails. The speed of all that is happening around us—who has time to even think about what all of this might mean.

I keep reminding friends, with change happening so quickly, who has time for a personal problem like a new diagnosis or pain in your left side or news that came in to you in an email that rocked your world just now? Seems as if we stuff and move on.

Then, today is the 10^th anniversary of my grandson’s birth and death all within 10 seconds. Alive for less than a minute…but a pain that will not leave even after all these years. Our world got derailed when Tommy died—so did my theology. How is it that you try move on when a child dies? You don’t move on. You live through it. And anniversaries bring so much up—and anniversaries come every 365 days. We don’t forget. Much gets stuffed. Much of our lives –the feelings, events, crises get crammed inside.

Gwen lit a candle this morning and we got our pictures out of his little hand in my hand. She emailed all our adult kids to help us be aware of today’s significance in the midst of so, so, so much happening around us.

We seem to be good at stuffing and cramming down feelings of disappointment, disillusionment and discouragement. We feel the need to move on. Moving on is our default mode it seems. As long as we are moving up and to the right on the graph of our lives, then all must be well. Right? No!

It’s made me wonder what might be really happening in us and to us because we all seem to have a trash compactor inside us. It’s the place where all the mess of our lives seems to go because we oddly feel we “have to” move on. Onward and upward, as they say.

In my 45 year marriage, Gwen and I were able to stuff a lot into our trash compactor until one day, the red lights starting flashing; the alarms went off and the sirens started blaring—forcing us to stop and look inside. What we found wasn’t pretty. It took a “professional trash compactor repair person” to help us get “it” all out. In our case, getting “it” out, took two years of hard work. We sorted through her story of being placed and raised in a boarding school in Africa for way too many years. Then my story of looking for love in all the wrong places and being celebrated for my addiction which is workaholism, in the mainline, protestant church where I was the senior leader. The church grew but I collapsed.

Mercy, it’s been a lot to unload. And there’s this—just when I think, “There now, everything is finally tidy and clean. Something comes up. Something doesn’t smell right. And here we are again. Somehow, all the trash gets connected. As you cram it in, press it down; force it all in, one corner of one piece of trash attaches to another wrinkle or crease. What began with little trash multiples into a complete mess.

I know, I know, I know, it really does seem that some of us, who never look within, somehow are handed a “pass” by the “Big Trash Compactor god”—and they seem to get by quite fine without having to look through all their bags of trash. It’s like some people seem to be handed a “Get out of jail free card” or “Keep stuffing it all and getting on with your life.” But, this is not the case for me or perhaps you either.

Trash has a way of catching up with us. I’ve read that out in the Pacific Ocean there is a floating island of trash that is gargantua—like the size of a small state. (You can read about it here)

We look inside at our own collected trash because one day, we get a whiff, a smell that something strange seems rotten. And there we are…. We get curious and look inside.

Curiosity is the invitation to take a look and just lift the lid off and look around. Move a barely used, white napkin laying innocently on top of a heap of mess—pretending to hide something. And you lift the napkin off what is being covered and you see-- you discover the source of the mess…the root of the cause—the hidden issue that has been ransacking your life, marriage, vocation for all these years.

It takes courage to look within. It takes strength to lift the contents of the compactor up and out. But as we do, we discover an odd feeling rising up. The feeling is something close to freedom and relief.

Just imagine, all the strength we’ve used to keep pushing it all down and in? What if it all just finally came up?

Then, there’s this primal question:

Who can really handle my trash without running away; judging me or trying to fix me?

My poem, “The Trash Compactor” is an invitation. Look at it like a wedding invitation that you never, ever even thought of attending---and you put it in the trash, even though it might say, “RSVP.”

Put this in the trash or open the trash compactor.

One more thing. Be good to yourself when you open it. Be loving. Get a friend you both love and trust to help you. This is not the kind of work we do alone.