A grumpy man in his 70s, with whom I’ve exchanged only a few grunts, taught me the meaning of true love.
Armed with a stick, a sack, and a scowl, the man roams my neighbourhood. Curious about what he was up to, I staked him out, hiding behind trees and crouching behind bushes to observe him.
Maybe he’s the neighbourhood drug dealer, I thought. I ruled that out when I saw him growl at the neighbourhood dagga rooker.
Maybe he’s casing the hood to inform burglars when residents have left their homes, or to inform SABC licence collectors when they haven’t.
But what I saw was even more befuddling. He was picking up leaves and litter. Why would he spend his time voluntarily picking up a neighbourhood’s trash?
There’s no reward for it, at least not financial, and it’s not his garden. Even worse, it’s endless. People don’t stop throwing litter on the ground, and leaves don’t stop dropping.
Yet, day after day, the grumpy old man puts on a pair of gardening gloves, grabs his stick and sack, twists his mouth into a scowl, and picks up leaves and litter.
He does it for hours at a time, multiple times a week. He’s been doing it for years. This is how he’s decided to spend his retirement.
Surely there are better hobbies a person can pursue when they pack up their 9-to-5 job?
What’s wrong with sitting on the couch, kicking back with a beer and a bowl of peanuts, and watching sport on TV?
Or reading whodunnits, cracking cryptic crossword puzzles, and learning to play the air guitar?
If he wanted to spend time outdoors, a ramble in the nearby forest would be preferable to picking up cigarette stompies and dog poo.
But maybe this is more than a hobby. Maybe picking up other people’s trash gives him meaning. Maybe this is what makes him happy.
My attempts to chat with the grumpy old man about what motivates his public service have come to nought. He responds to my nods and hellos with a grunt, and returns to his task.
Because I couldn’t get an answer from him, I turned to Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who explored the meaning of life and its links to happiness.
Frankl founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for life’s meaning as the central human motivational force.
One of the obstacles to happiness, he concluded, is “ownership”, which leads to possessiveness, which impacts how we see our role in the world. The idea, of course, is that people aren’t a commodity to “own”.
True love involves looking after someone without needing to own them. It also involves looking after something without needing to own it.
The grumpy old man taught me that we should not only avoid falling into the trap of possessiveness over people; we should also avoid it in our relationship with the world.
In other words, the old grumpy man’s actions stem from a place of love, not from a place of ownership.
We’re given the responsibility to take care of the world, and that means not killing off endangered species, polluting marine and wildlife ecosystems, pumping poison into the atmosphere, and squandering scarce water.
It means understanding that it may be our world, but we don’t own it. We’ve been entrusted to love, protect and care for it. Every piece of trash picked up is a step towards a cleaner world.
Every time the grumpy old man bends down to pick up a piece of trash, he finds meaning and fulfilment in making a difference.
The grumpy old man taught me that true love is not about possession, it’s about preservation and stewardship.
And so in my quest for true love, I’ve found a stick and a sack. Now I’ve just got to spend hours in front of the mirror, practising my scowl.
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