How Solid is My Commitment?

This morning I headed out for my usual early morning Wednesday run. As I ran along, it occurred to me that I ran last night and failed to follow through on my commitment to pick up at least three pieces of trailside litter. It totally escaped my mind.

I thought about my options. I could start fresh again today. I could make-up for last evening's missed collection. In terms of athletic training, generally the philosophy is not to try to make up for missed training sessions. This, however, is different. Those three pieces of uncollected trash do matter to the environment. And it also leaves this uneasy feeling inside of me - I know the choices I make around this have to do with just how committed am I really to following through on this promise.

As I am mulling all of this around in my brain, I ultimately decide to pick up six pieces of litter this morning - three for last night and three for today. That allows me to feel in integrity with myself and the promise I made to my fellow trailmate.

I thought you might be interested in exactly what I picked up this morning.

1) An empty Idaho Potato plastic bag
2) A dryer fabric softener sheet
3) A kleenex - eew
4) An empty plastic wrapper from "Hot & Spicy Crunchy Nuggets" - not sure what that is
5) An empty diet Pepsi can
6) A lunch sack still containing the remains of a partially eaten lunch of 1/2 sandwich, a piece of foil that the sandwich was wrapped in, 2 packages of unopened crackers (does all of that count as more than one item?)

I should also mention that as I turned around at the 1/2 point of my run, after already collecting and depositing three pieces of trash, I spotted him just up ahead. Yup, sure enough - there he was, running along and collecting litter as he went. I ran past him with a cheery "hello", now mindful that I was the "scout". He would be following behind and would notice the pieces of litter that I failed to pick up. I was extra vigilant - determined to have to trail up to his high standard of pristine and litter-free. That very fact was the reason I had to pick up that lunch sack. It was bulky, heavy, rather soggy and less than convenient to carry along to the trail end. But I knew that he would pick it up no matter what.

Feeling pretty good about my environmental efforts, I left the trail and ran along the sidewalks back to where my car was parked. And I noticed something. Trash. Lots of it. Scattered here and there. Would my trailmate stop his collecting efforts just because he left the trail? I doubt it. While I didn't pick up any of those pieces of trash on the way back to my car, I have decided that when I am out and about, if I see some trash I will pick it up and throw it away.

One benefit of scanning the trailside, is that I also noticed many things that I would have ordinarily run by without a glance. Did you know that there are yellow tulips planted about every 100 yds in one section of the trail? There was also a very vocal woodpecker that seemed to be "thumping me along side of the head" (kind of like the V-8 commercial) with his loud hammering on the tree trunk, when I nearly ran by a piece of trash.

All of this got me thinking. When we make a commitment to something or someone, is it a solid commitment? Or a partial commitment - only when we remember, when it's convenient, or when nothing else gets in the way?