Here’s another idea to consider as a metaphor. Do you recycle the garbage that comes your way?

In other words, are you ever able to take something messy and make it into something clean and useful? I tend to think of garbage as useless, a space-taker. It’s like the clutter of the planet, or of one’s thoughts. And I see recycling as transforming one thing into something else. It reuses rather than wastes. It’s a loving act in its purest form, like how the flame of one candle can light an infinite number of other candles.

Someone who can take garbage, the garbage of others no less, and make it into something useful has tapped into what it means to be human at one of our deepest levels.