Use & throw...

We have moved from a culture of "recycle & reuse" to "Use & throw". I remember an interesting incident which happened a few years back. I was digging out my old coloured lights to light it for the festival of Diwali. Usually you use it for the festival and then dump it in some closet for the rest of the year.

You take it out just before the onset of the festival season and invariably find that a few bulbs are fused. The same thing happened to me. I picked up the light and went to an electrical shop to repair and replace the fused bulbs. The electrician was surprised to see me. He politely told me to dump the bulb set and buy a new one.

I belong to an era, where we were brought up in the family and the community to "recycle and reuse" things. So based on my upbringing, I went to the shop to repair and reuse my colour lights. The shopkeeper gently smiled and said that the cost of repair may be more than the price of a new set of colour lights. I followed the advise of the shopkeeper. I left my old bulbs with him and bought a new set.

When I returned home I reflected on this issue. I realised that life has indeed changed. The way we look at life today is different than the past. If we considered recycling everything in life as the right thing to do, use and throw is the norm for everything in life today.

It struck me that this may be true in our relationships too. We were brought up to respect our parents and elders right through our life. We were trained to be grateful to people who help us at various stages of life, throughout our life time. But today, we tend to use our parents as providers of comfort and tend to forget them as they grow old and may depend on us. We forget friends and relatives after we have benefited from their help and move on in our own lives.

Relationships have also transitioned from gratitude to usefulness. Gratitude symbolises renewing our relationship for our lifetime. Usefulness on the other hand fixes an expiry date for a relationship and we tend to "control+alt+del" or move on as soon as the usefulness of that relationship is over.

One may wonder if we are moving from "Selflessness" to "Selfishness" in life. It may be difficult to state whether it is right or wrong. After all today, we have mastered the art of justifying every action of ours. No value is absolute and sacrosanct any more. It is all relative and we find innovate reasons to justify our behaviour all the time to everyone around us.

One more learning I got in life. Once when I was buying new clothes for my family for a festival someone suggested that every time I buy new clothes, I could consider donating an equal number of clothes ( in good condition) to those who need them more than me. This may again be an old fashioned belief but it does help and is based on the philosophy of recycle and reuse.

Life comes a full circle. Today use of plastic bags is being banned all over the world as it is polluting the environment around us and choking the drains causing floods everywhere. We are urged to use cotton bags for our shopping and recycle and reuse them. I am happy with this change and I commit to do my bit in this direction.

One pair of shoes used to recycle to at least two generations in the past whereas now it does not even survive one person for more than a few years as in the photo above.

Is it time to recycle and reuse everything in life ?

S Ramesh Shankar

21st July 2018