What a load of rubbish

Those living in Australia most likely have seen an advertisement of NSW Government encouraging people to throw their own rubbish to the bin instead of being a tosser:

Watching one of these commercials reminded me about unnecessary stress in our life. Let me begin with the story. I was in my early 20s and just started to work at school as Religious Education teacher while studying and working almost 16 hours a day, back in Poland. One Monday morning, I was rushing to work and as I was leaving the convent, I got stopped by one of the sisters who quite harshly told me that I left the bucket and mop after cleaning the bathroom in a wrong spot. First of all, I was not even responsible for this part of house cleaning and secondly, I could not really comprehend why did it even matter if the bucket and mop was left in the other place. All it required, was simply to ask others where the bucket was instead of making presumptions or getting upset to me. It was so not necessary, I thought. Still quite upset, I reached the school building and went to the staff room to pick up the keys for the classroom, while one of the teachers stopped me making complains about a child from the class which I was about to teach who was misbehaving. “Why are you telling me this?” – I asked. “All you have to do is to talk to the child when you see something inappropriate”. I rushed to the classroom and found the boy the other teacher was talking about in the middle of a fight with another child. I shouted at them to stop and asked them to sit down. The boy who I mentioned before got upset and yelled at me: “I didn’t do anything wrong!” He run out of the classroom and slammed the door. I could see how upset he was. And I realised that I was upset ever since the beginning of that day also. This was a wakeup call for me: “Grace, stop!”- I thought. It was so unnecessary to yell at those kids, I could talk to them and resolve the issue better.

Life doesn’t stop there. I moved to Australia almost 20 years ago and the similar events continued to happen. One day when unnecessary stress overwhelmed me, after finishing work, I went to visit my friend. Our talk was rather me venting out and her listening instead of an actual conversation. I expressed what bothered me that day. When I stopped talking, she looked at me and asked: “Do you have a shredder at home?”. I said: “Yes, why are you asking?” Seeing me being surprised, she continued: “You need to use it!”. By this sentence I was already puzzled and was thinking about what possible documentation she might ask me to shred, so I asked: “What do you mean?”. What happened next was a long conversation about life priorities and keeping in mind and heart things which are valuable only.

Way too often we become a “dumping ground” of other people’s opinions, statements, decisions, and even gossip and nonsense talks. When we accumulated all kinds of rubbish in our heart and become overloaded, we often lose control and throw our rubbish on other people; not to mention people we love. We often express our anger and frustration by yelling and screaming and blaming others while the only place they should be is in the bin.

It is a decision of our hearts and minds to go through the “sorting” process. We cannot control what people think and say. What we need to focus on is to see that we have done good deeds the best we could. On daily basis, we need to dispose things which are unnecessary and keep those which matters.

God asks us to take care of our hearts and keep them clean. In Old Testament, in the book of Proverbs (4:23) we read: Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.  And this is so true. If our heart is full of rubbish, all that comes out is toxic and brings negativity to others. In the Gospel written by Matthew (6:21) Jesus reminds us: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

My prayer for you and me is to increase our ability to separate treasure from rubbish and be like Jesus to others. I pray also with thanksgiving for my friend, who introduced me to the imaginary shredding machine to dispose loads of rubbish. Yours and my task is to continue to process what matters in life and what is unnecessary in your heart.

Happy shredding, everyone!

Sr Grace