Global Sized Guilt

My husband and I set a goal this year. We want to be able to leave our current home for a larger one. The same place that was once "too big" for the two of us has become quite cramped since our family doubled in size. With the spring time upon us we thought it would be a good time to think about testing the market, so tonight we started to throw away some useless, broken, or extra things from our basement in hopes that an opportunity to move will soon follow. As I added my last of tonight's trash to the pile I felt really sad. It's hard to let go of things, especially things that were once bright and new and important, and useful. What made me even sadder though is how much junk we produce. I always wonder about garbage and where it really goes, yet I don't find out, and I know books and articles have been written on the subject and the info is out there, because it will just depress me. Yesterday I wrote about the guilt we feel when we put our needs before our families', tonight I'm thinking about the guilt associated with putting our needs above the world's. This is another cross us modern women have to bare that our mothers and grandmothers didn't. They made their meals without thinking about what kinds of pesticides might be on the vegetables, cooked meat without thoughts of slaughterhouse abuse and mad cow disease, picked up the dry cleaning without fear of all the chemicals on the plastic covering, tossed out the trash without sorting it. They were blissfully ignorant. I cannot say that we know too much, we just know too late. And now their blissful ignorance is our burden, as is this guilt I feel over the heap of trash in my front yard, waiting to be taken to some landfill somewhere. I often think we will some day live on mountains of garbage, I just hope most of it isn't mine.