I got into town from a business trip on Friday.  When I came home, I noticed that my garbage can was in front of my garage door.  My sister must have taken it out on Thursday  night.  I said to myself that I would take it in later.  I cleaned up and watered the plants.  I went to a friends coffee shop to bring some vegetables I picked from the garden.  I saw the garbage can again when I came home and said I would bring it in later.  Well you know where this is going.  One thing lead to another and I never brought it in.  Friday was the beginning of a huge music festival near my house.  There is a lot of foot traffic in my area.  I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I didn’t take the garbage can in.  All night I envisioned looking in my garbage can Saturday morning and finding garbage inside.  I thought about how I would react when I saw it.  I thought about how angry I would be and I would be asking the question “Why don’t people care!?!?!?!?!”  I then thought about impermanence and how I only think the worse, but it may not happen.  I had a restless sleep.  I woke  up in the morning and pulled the garbage can into the garage.  But before I did, I had to open it.  I thought surely there would be some garbage in it, but to my surprise, it was empty.

In the development my Buddhism practice, I remember early on, I would think about impermanence – I think that someone will put garbage in my garbage can, but I really don’t know because anything can happen.  this would help me reduce the stress in my current situation but if this situation arose again, the stress would come back.   Then later I started to internalize – If some one put garbage in my garbage can, I can’t get mad because I’ve done things like that before.  Like I would have garbage (like tissues or wrappers) and when I passed by a store with a garbage can outside or a fast food restaurant, I would throw it in there.  The garbage can was for their customers not for me – a non-customer.  Again, I would get some temporary relief from the stress.  Now  I am working on looking at the root cause of the feeling – Could this situation have been avoided?  How did I get myself into this situation?  I saw the garbage can in front of my house and should have brought it in, but I didn’t, yes I forgot, but when I realized that I forgot, I should have immediately took care of, but instead, I thought I would take care of it later.  When I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I forgot to bring the garbage can in again, I should have take care of the situation, but again I didn’t, but I didn’t sleep well because I worried about someone putting garbage in my garbage can.  In the morning I checked it and it was empty and I brought it in.  I started thinking about impermanence…what I thought would happen, didn’t! But I remembered LP Anan and Mae Yo telling me I need to see the root cause.  After some thought, I realized that I was lazy in this situation and if someone threw garbage into my garbage can, I would only have myself to blame. I couldn’t say people don’t care OR people have no respect.  It would be like me saying that people are thieves and greedy if I left a $100 bill in the middle of the street and walked away thinking it would still be there when I got back.  It was silly.  Once I saw the cause of my situation, the impermanence and internalization exercise became less important to me because I had discovered the root cause. Now I have something to focus on and correct because in looking in my life, laziness shows up in plenty of places….