This I Believe: Life Lessons by Dan Gediman, Mary Jo Gediman, John Gregory

enclave of Little Armenia in Los Angeles, my first reaction to the trash-filled streets was to say a well-known prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” As I walked my dog every day, I thought the litter was something I just had to accept. After all, what was I supposed to do? Pick it up?
    Then one day, I decided to do just that. With a leap of faith, I went down to Home Depot, bought myself an E-Z Reacher, and just like that, I started plucking the empty cigarette packs, soda cans, fast-food packaging, coffee containers, newspapers, Styrofoam cups, and just about anything you can think of into plastic grocery bags. For over five years now, I have filled at least four bags every morning, one for each block of my dog-walking route. Sometimes, I do it again on different streets in the afternoon, especially if I’m having a bad day.
    I believe in picking up trash because it’s taught me that you can’t assume to know the difference between the things you must accept and the things that you can change—you have to think about it. It’s taught me to question the premise of all sorts of assumptions I had previously made, from the idea that the only possible reaction to traffic is anger and frustration to the belief that I was a hopeless addict who couldn’t possibly get sober.
    Every morning, picking up trash is my answer to the questions: How can I be of service today? What do I have the courage to change? And every night, no matter how much the day didn’t seem to go my way, I can fall asleep counting the bags of trash I’ve picked up, comforted that in this lifetime I’ve been able to find one thing to do that’s unarguably, unambiguously good.
    Mark Olmsted is a former drug addict who undertook keeping his neighborhood clean as part of his recovery regimen. He conducts lectures titled “The Six Spiritual Principles of Picking Up Trash” from his base in Hollywood, California, where he still picks up bags of litter every day. His website is www.trashwhisperer.com .

To Hear Your Inner Voice

    Christine Todd Whitman
    If I have learned nothing else during the course of my life, I’ve learned to listen to my inner voice. Everyone has one. We call it different things: our moral compass, a gut feeling, following our heart. Whatever we name it, we should always pay attention to it. It makes us who we are.
    Nine years ago I was in the second year of my second term as governor of New Jersey. I loved that job, and I was working hard to make what would be my last term, due to term limits, as productive as my first.
    Toward the end of that term a U.S. Senate seat opened for New Jersey, and I quickly came under intense pressure to throw my hat into the ring. As soon as I said yes, I knew I should have said no.
    Deep down, I knew I didn’t want to run for the Senate. I could do much more as my state’s chief executive than I could in Washington, where I would be just one-one-hundredth of one-half of one-third of the federal government. And the idea of appealing to special interests for the money I would have to raise didn’t sit well with me. My inner voice was telling me loud and clear, “Don’t do it.” I didn’t listen.
    In the end, all it took was one trip to Washington, D.C., as a Senate candidate to know that I just couldn’t see this through. So I dropped out of the race, returned the money that we had raised, and went back to being governor. My aborted campaign wasn’t one of my finer moments. But it reaffirmed my belief in following my inner voice.
    A far more personal moment came when my inner voice told me to do something and I didn’t listen. It was the night before my brother’s third heart surgery, when I visited him in the hospital. After a walk down the hall and a light talk about our children, it was time to