My mom found this basket of flowers beside a dumpster. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” she said. I’ve thought a lot about this phrase. How we use it to describe the “stuff” in our lives. The excess, the unused, and the no longer necessary. We use it to describe our junk. The kind we no longer need anymore. But somehow, over time, we have used it to describe each other as well.
Whether it is a relationship, friendship, or community; we have arrived at this place where we discard people as if they were objects. If they no longer fit, if they are “too much,” or if they make us feel uncomfortable, we simply get rid of them. And the downfall to the way in which we discard is that, the very people who are given up, are the people who begin to believe the lie that their life is irrelevant.
There are times in my own life when I have felt easily replaceable. I had been used up to the point of my own expiration and it was time to throw me out. I remember how I felt afterwards as well; so very insignificant. And when you start believing the lie that your life has no purpose, how could you find meaning in it? If you can’t find those things, then the struggle to find the one thing the human heart strives for, is even harder.
Love is the one thing every person who breathes, longs for. Every last one. We’ve started seeing people as projects, objects, and items. We devalue each other and we do the same with ourselves. Instead of honoring people and the time we have with them, we easily discredit the purpose they have had in our lives. Because we forgot what love looks like.
The only way to change this is to own the junk in our own lives and walk in the treasure instead. No other human, regardless of the impact they’ve had in our life, should validate us and the treasure that we carry. And once we walk in knowing the treasure that we are, then we will be able to call out the treasures in each other. So are you going to look at people like they’re trash or are you going to treat them like a treasure, instead?
Aubray Scott
