Toxic Waste on Your Acre of Land
When we are born, each of us
gets an acre of land. We are kids – babies really – when we get this chunk of
land and we don’t know much what to do with it. We don’t know how to develop it
or protect it. We just have it. Now, if our parents do a good job for us, they
protect our land for us and they help us learn how to develop its potential. If
so, we arrive at adulthood prepared to make our living off this bit of land.
We live in a world filled with toxic waste. Most of us, maybe all of us, end
up with some toxic waste on our land. Even the best taught and best protected of
us receives some toxic experiences. Fine farmland receives toxic rain, what was
thought to be a useful pesticide (such as DDT) turns out to have widespread and
devastating consequences, or a passerby carelessly tosses a battery onto the
land where it decays. Those of us less well taught and less well protected
receive more toxic waste. For some of us it is as if our unspoiled fields are
found by unscrupulous people who deliberately dump toxic waste there with little
regard for the consequences. In any case, I think I have never met a person who
did not have some contamination on their acre. It is always a matter of degree.
Sooner or later, as we begin to try to work our land, we discover the toxic
waste and must deal with it. Of course, we generally become aware of the toxic
waste when we begin feeling badly or when our land will not produce properly or
when other people don’t want to hang out on our land. I doubt very much that
many of us stroll out on to the acre the first day and immediately identify the
waste. It dawns on us gradually that something is amiss. I am sure that we
sometimes reason that it was the seed we planted or the people we invited or our
failure to take our vitamins that produced this effect. After all, we love our
land and do not think our land could be at fault. But as that recognition comes
clear, we then, I think, have a range of options.
First, we can pretend that the toxic waste is not there and go about our
business. In that choice, we keep getting sick and the land is still
unproductive and we still run people off. But if we are determined, we can limp
along in this way for quite a long time indeed - maybe a lifetime, until the
toxic junk kills us. This is the way of denial.
Second, we can build walls around the toxic spots and never go there again.
Of course, we forfeit the productive potential of that patch of ground forever,
but we stop being quite so sick. If the patch is fairly small and the cost of
the lost productivity is low, then this may be a survivable approach. This is
the way of abdication of responsibility.
Third, some of us go out to the most contaminated spot, sit down smack in the
middle, and begin crying out. "Some son of a bitch dumped all this toxic crap on
my acre and it is making me sick. Why did that son of a bitch do that and
whatever am I going to do about it? Why must I suffer so? I am getting sicker
and sicker and sicker." Rolling and thrashing about in the toxic junk, we do get
sicker and sicker, waiting for someone else to clean up our land and restore us
to health. This is the way of victimhood.
The final possibility is to begin to learn how to clean up our land and heal
ourselves. We consult with experts and read books and talk to our family,
friends, and neighbors as we begin to learn how to clean up this toxic waste.
This takes a commitment and work commensurate to the amount of toxic stuff
dumped. This is a way in which life is clearly not fair because it means that
those of us most badly hurt will have to work the hardest to recover. But it is
the only way we can recover the land. This is the way of recovery.
These four ways are fundamental life choices - denial, abdication, victimhood,
and effortful recovery. Each is ours to choose.
