I am the self-designated screw patrol on the gravel road I walk to get my mail each day. It’s about a 2-mile round-trip. A mile down the hill and a mile back up. Every day I find so many screws on the road, it’s become a mission for me to pick up all that I see. Now factually, I pick more than just screws. My patrol also includes nails, bolts, hooks, tacks and any other man-made object that will puncture tires.
And I patrol more than country roads. I also patrol city sidewalks and streets. I am a finder of screws and other things that will cause tire damage lying in hazardous places. And religiously I pick them up. I have had to replace many of my own tires because of these types of hazards in the road. Every time I pick one up, I feel like I am paying it forward. Maybe my screw patrol efforts sparing somebody else’s tire will spare me a tire or two on the road as well.
A dilemma that is created for me upon removing the hazard is what to do with it? Is it trash? Can it be repurposed? I have heard it said that one person’s trash is another’s treasure. How do I know which it is? How do I get it to someone who considers it a treasure? The result of this dilemma is I end up with a pile of picked up trash/treasure items to deal with.
Then I started wondering about this behavior of mine. Do I remove hazards on the road for myself? Do I remove them for other people on the road? Is my behavior strictly limited to saving tires or do I extend it to myself and my fellow travelers in other ways? And is it self-serving if I remove the screws off the road because I want to preserve my own tires in addition to helping save other drivers’ tires? Or is the saving of others just a byproduct of self-preservation?
Does my intention influence the value of the action or does the act itself, by nature of what it is, have merit regardless of intention? What makes something an act of kindness versus an act of self-service cloaked in a “good deed”? How many times am I doing something I think is altruistic in nature when in reality it is service to self? And if the self-serving act still results in benefitting others, even if not the intention, does it still count as service to others? Intention versus outcome… a very old dilemma indeed.
How many of my own screws am I holding onto as treasure when they are really trash that I should throw away? I believe I carry all kinds of hazards around with me every day. Especially in my thoughts. I pick up all kinds of screws as I travel and as I do, spin off some new ones to haunt me. I think about this behavior, and it makes me wonder. Picking up screws as you travel a road is good but picking up screws as you travel life is not good. Right? Or perhaps it is not the retrieval of the screw, but what you do with the screw after you pick it up that is important?
How many of us pick up the screws we encounter on life’s road just so somebody else doesn’t get a puncture? How many times do we just leave it? Or figure someone else will pick it up? We realize its potential to harm, and it would be very easy to pick up, yet we leave it in the middle of the road and walk by.
And ironically, how many times does the screw we left in the road end up puncturing our own life?
Even the word screw is an enigma to me. To ensure something is put together in a way that will last and is solid, people make sure it is totally screwed. Yet, if someone is presented with a bad situation with no chance of redemption, they are also totally screwed.
Picking up the screws. Trash or treasure? Together or undone? I wonder.