Humility & Compost Bins
During my tenure of raising kids and being married, I outworked myself in many ways and it was a great way to hide out in puritanical resentment. On top of that, I was self-righteous in my ability to outwork all of my family members with household chores. I spent the weekends proving my human self-worth through loud sighing, tending to monotonous chores, exhausted and freely providing dirty looks to any observer not offering assistance. We didn’t fight much, but when we did, it was always about the distribution of household chores (or the lack thereof). I was stuck in my sanctimonious task list and the family’s beef with me was on the losing battleground of the don’t-boss-me-I’m-the-boss-of-my-own-self. No one came out victorious.
One morning in particular, I was filling the compost bin with garden weeds alone in a silent fury. Saturday mornings spent bitter and/or resentful was my constant mode of anger operation. My son and husband were watching me from the back porch while chatting. This infuriated me as I wrangled weeds with an air of indignation and looks that could kill. I exited out the garden gate pushing that large compost bin, generously provided by the city, across a wet grass patch in our yard. I didn’t push it like a normal human might, but rather as if I was channeling a scorned, bitter Wonder Woman. I barreled that large bin out of the garden gate and as I rounded the garden, the compost lid popped open. I furiously pushed ahead when my low traction Croc shoes slipped on the wet ground beneath me. The slipping caused one foot to leave planet earth and lose control of the bin with ironic synchronicity. That’s when the true circus show officially began. When I lost the death grip on the bin, my other foot stepped on the bin lid at which point I launched myself full force into the bin. Standing at 5’ 1” on a good day, the bin consumed my entire being. At this point, the boys’ chatting stopped and they just observed in wonderment, and quickly transitioned to laughter after they knew that I was unharmed. Granted, it was pretty funny, especially when I saw no clear path to exit. So I sat there in humility, but gratefully, I found the ability to laugh with them.
It’s one thing to have this type of silly business happen when you are all alone, but to have folks bear witness, is quite another. I rolled and swayed side to side to slowly back out of the bin, but it took a good 60 seconds for a successful exit strategy to take place. After I popped out and rose to my feet, I resigned myself to taking myself less seriously. Sure the distribution of chores needed to change, but life has a funny way of giving us the potential humor in most situations if we choose to laugh alongside it.
Every time that I choose to take myself too seriously, life teaches me otherwise. I will step in cat barf, cut a corner too close and shoulder check a wall, or a song will play on Spotify DJ that perfectly suits the crazy situation. I also have to coat check my ego when walking into a situation where I think that my opinions or life experience tempts me to warrant any air of superiority. I don’t know any better than anyone else because I am by no means an expert on pretty much anything. For me, humility is knowing that really being human is a critical life force to be experienced and hopefully, learned from. So I need to constantly check my ego, or the story line that I can tell myself. If I don’t keep the ego driven wolves at bay, I may find myself stuck in the compost bin of life. And nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to be stuck there in Crocs.
Song: “G.R.I.ND” by Asher Roth - To get away from the “grind” of doing and even farther away from traction shoes.
© Katie Baker 2024
