(Covenant Companion. Reprinted by permission of the Covenant Press)

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I worry so much about world hunger today, that I when home and ate five cookies. Did personal or global problems ever become so overhelming that you were immobilized or driven to some action that actually aggravated the problem? Have you experienced such frastration about the hopelessness of solving the problems of poverty, environmental pollution, or human suffering that you could avoid it only by deciding that you were powerless to do anything about their allevation? This is called Responsiblity Assumption Overload (RAO). Here's how I dealt with this feeling.

I park my car away from the building at work. That way I get both exercise and a parking space, as everyone else competes for spot next to the entrance. My morning and late afternoon strolls take me on a stretch of lawn between the tennis courts and the soccer field, and across an occasionally used softball diamond. The lawn is twenty feet wide, more or less. Soft and green, it was originally very littered. Tennis players discard tennis ball containers (and their flip-tops), worn out sweat socks, broken shoelaces and energy candy bar wrappers. Soccer game spectators leave behind beer bottles and junk food cellophane.

In my early days it disgusted me, and my thoughtscentered on ways of correcting the situation: writing letters to the campus newspaper (no doubt totally ignored); campaigning for anti-litter regulations (who would enforce them?); organizing a 'Zap-Day' cleanup (leaving 364 days for littering). All noble efforts would have demonstrated my indignation, raised my blood pressure, and attracted attention, but they would have not changed the appearance and/or condition of the area.

So, I decided to take ownership. I would be the solution. I did not tell anyone of this; it was probably against some rule or another. I decided that I would be responsible for the environmental quality of this twenty foot swath. I did not care what the other parts of the campus were like. They were someone else's problem. But each day, going from and to my car, I picked up litter.

At first, it was as much as I could conveniently carry. Then I made a game of it, limiting my picking to ten items each way. It was an exciting day when I realized I was picking faster than "they" were littering. Finally, the great day arrived when I looked back on my twenty feet of lawn--now perfectly clean.

Where did I put the litter? At first, I brought into a wastebasket in the building, or took it to the car to bring home. Then a curious thing happened. One day, large orange barrels appeared at each end of my swath. Someone in maintenance had become my silent conspirator--periodically emptying and replacing the barrels. He, too, knew the wisdom of keeping a low profile about it all.

I've done this for several years now. Has general campus appearance changed? Not much! Have litterers stopped littering? No! Then if nothing has changed, why bother?

Here lies the secret. Something has changed. My twenty foot swath and me! That five minute walk is a high spot of the day. Instead of fussing and stewing and storing up negative thoughts, I begin and end my work day in a positive mood. My perspective is brighter. I can enjoy my immediate surroundings--and myself--as I pass through a very special time space.

"It" is better because of me. I am better because of "it". "We" enjoy the relationship. Maybe, even, "I" look forward with anticipation to my coming. With a brighter outlook, I have learned a lot of things that would have gone unnoticed. For instance, I have learned that tennis players grunt a lot. There seems to be some correlation between the quality of the grunt, especially on the serve, and the quality of one's game. Maybe I have discovered the secret of the game. I have also learned that soccer players curse a lot, but there does not seem to be any correlation between that ability and soccer skills. I have learned that most soccer spectators, at least at my college, come to eat, drink and talk--not to watch the game.

My learning--and the twenty foot swath--does not stop at the building door. There is an important principle that follows wherever I go. I cannot solve man's inhumanity to man, but I can affirm, with a smile and a word of appreciation, those who feel burdened by the need to work at lowly jobs. I cannot right the imbalances of centuries of discrimination, but I can "lift up" someone who feels the weight of a poor self-image. I can treat women as equals without solving the problems of sex discrimination. I can seek out the social and economic litter in my own "twenty foot swath" with out demanding of myself that I "clean up the whole world".

I now practice a discipline of leaving each time space capsule of my life a little better than when I entered it. Each personal contact, each event, each room I enter becomes a small challenge. I want to leave it improved, but more important, I am responsible to myself to be improved; and thereby, maybe--just maybe--my having been there will make life better for someone else.

I a.m becoming more and more disenchanted and suspicious of revolutionaries, crusaders, militants and do-gooders. Many, if not most, seem to be more concerned about being right than being loving or effectual. The zealor, no matter how well-intentioned, often leaves a trail of wounded people while in pursuit of the cause.

Is this all too myopic--shutting one's eyes to the greater concerns? I does not need to be! I now have a "twenty foot swath". Next it may be forty, or sixty, or eighty feet wide. Ten talents were not requir of him who had been given only one. Too many people stumble by taking on causes too great for their level of discernment and discipline. They need to begin to catch the vision of the important promise, that the meek shall inherit the earth, not the indignant or frustrated.