One man's trash is another man's window

"One man's trash is another man's treasure"

- Unknown

I love those sayings that you come across in life that just seem to stick in your head. We all have them. I wonder how many times we've failed at something and someone has replied with the classic "If at first you don't succeed...", or when something goes wrong for someone you hear, "Well they've made their bed" (which ironically I haven't done today!). There are probably thousands of these sayings, each with their own little message.

I suppose for me the saying "One man's trash is another man's treasure" was one of the first I remember. I remember one incident in Primary school where a man who worked at the local landfill site brought in items that seemed, on the outside, to be brand new products. Sealed lids, unopened packages, but in fact were all items that had been brought down from the waste site. It's fascinating to see what people consider to be rubbish and what people simply throw away.

Just last month our local council decided to jump on the band wagon of fortnightly bin collections. It's put a real pressure on people to recycle and reduce their waste, a topic that constantly seems to plague our news. I'm not against reducing waste and recycling etc etc, but does it really need to be a daily news article? Anyway... I digress. 

You're probably thinking, "Why write a blog about rubbish?" Let me explain.

As I was reading through my twitter feed this morning (@ryanmorgan_1) I noticed an article that reminded me of this saying I had first encountered at Primary school. It was a story about a monk who had spent the last 50 years building a cathedral out of rubbish and items that people simply didn't want anymore. Here's a link if you want to see what I am talking about: Recycled Cathedral .

Wow! It's pretty impressive and clearly something that was not built over night. It's taken a lot of time and care to get it to that point, and it's not even finished. After watching this clip it got me thinking what sorts of things do we waste in life?

Maybe when we hear about waste we simply think about old, broken, useless things but I guess waste comes in all shapes and sizes. Wasted time. Wasted opportunity. Wasted efforts.

There's lots of things we waste in life and yet to someone our waste may have been a treasure. To a man with only hours to live, our wasted time would be a great treasure. Not money, not diamonds, not fame nor fortune. Time is his treasure. Or those times when you've walked past someone living on the streets and simply walk by. How many times have you done that and thought, "Maybe I should have given them something?" Wasted opportunity. You never know what a difference a sandwich or a burger can make to someone who has nothing. Who would have thought a burger could be a treasure? It's all about perspective. The way we see things.

There are many times in life where we think we are right, where we think we know best, but I wonder how many times we've stopped to think about another perspective? 

I love those illusion pictures and photos that you can look at. The longer you look the more you see different things. When you change your perspective you see something in a completely new way. It just means sometimes taking a little bit longer to wait and watch.

The monk building his cathedral changed his perspective to see something that others couldn't. What one man saw as an old oil barrel, the monk saw as a pillar for his church. What one man saw as an old plastic bottle, the monk saw as a beautiful stained glass window. It's all about perspective.

So I end with this thought.

How do you look at life? What's your perspective. So many people struggle in life because they see everything in such a negative way - just like looking at a piece of rubbish. How different life could be if we took another perspective. The monk's perspective. When you look at the different situations around you what do you see? Maybe you see them like old plastic bottles? Something you just want to get rid of so you can move on to the next new thing. Or could it be that maybe what you are going through is just a small part of a bigger stained glass window that tells a story? 

As you go through another day in this big wide world, know that everything you have is a gift. So use it well and don't waste it, you could just be the treasure that someone has been looking for. 

Bywyd sydd yn byw! - Just living life!

RM