2. yet, the trash gets taken out

7am. Empty streets in Bogota, Colombia. We ride in a $2 Uber across the city to our meeting point for our day trip to Lake Guatavita and the Zipaquira Salt Cathedral. We stop - and wait for a trash truck to do its business.

As with many things on our travels, it’s almost impossible to tell in that moment where in the world we might be. That familiar trash truck could be in Seattle, Washington, Lisbon, Portugal, or Bogota, Colombia. And it will continue to take out the trash regardless of if we’re here to observe it or not.

In that quiet moment, the mundaneness of the empty city streets and trash truck doing its thing reminded me of home. We’re often wrapped up in the drama and complexities of our own lives, maybe more so than most in the United States, and feel as if we personally are the center of the world and universe.

Yet, no matter what we do, no matter how crazy life might feel, all over the world, trash trucks continue to take out the trash; people get up, go to work, and live their lives out; birds chirp and trees grow. Despite everything, despite whatever pessimistic feelings of world-ending apocalypses, economic crashes, and global pandemics, the trash still gets taken out.

Of course many places don’t get the quiet luxury of the familiar and comforting sound of a garbage truck collecting its bounty and driving away. But, for those that do, it represents a sort of comforting weekly presence of life continuing to hum along in a near-peaceful fashion.

For most Friday mornings of my life that familiar clunking and hum of the garbage truck making its rounds has been ever-present. And a familiar that at home and around the world, life continues on, and the trash gets taken out.