Grocery Carts & Parking Lots. Start with the Grocery Carts.

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with grocery carts and parking lots.

Years ago, people unloaded their grocery bags filled with a week’s load of groceries into their car, and then walked their cart back up to the line of carts at the entrance of the supermarket. We just did it. That was a long time ago.

Slowly, but surely, we stopped doing it. We’d just leave the cart in the space next to theirs—or maybe push it to the front edge of the parking spot so maybe another car could still squeeze in.

A few years ago, I read a study that said successful people in life are more likely to return their grocery carts to the proper spot. Yes, they did a study, and maybe our tax dollars paid for it. Whatever. I want to be a successful person in life, and I also felt a little ashamed. So I started doing it, returning it to the front of the store.

Then came the cart corrals. A little fenced-off section in the parking lot—usually taking up one or two actual spaces—just so people wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to the front. So American. A quick fix. God forbid you should have to walk an extra hundred steps in your day.

With all that, I still see carts strewn across the lot. And now there are people wearing neon vests, pushing long trains of abandoned carts back into place—like stray cattle during spring roundup.

I’ve decided it’s a metaphor.

Because the truth is, it’s more than laziness. It’s a public statement.

Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. I’ll do what I want, where I want, and I don’t really care if it takes up space in your parking spot. And, I certainly don’t care what the grocery store parking lot looks like. I’m just passing through.

That’s why I’ve decided I want to take my grocery cart all the way back up to the front from here on out. Because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s part of my neighborhood.

Because it’s who I want to be.

I want to be a helpful member of society.

I want to be a good neighbor.

I want to make it easier for others.

Somewhere along the way, we all lost the plot.

We pick and choose the ways we help others. We support certain organizations, that connect with us. Or our friend cares about it because of their child. We donate to causes that matter to us. And, that’s great, but I’m suggesting we care more about that which doesn’t directly affect us.

This is about choosing to be a good person pretty much all day, everywhere we go, in every little way.

If we start cleaning up the little things, maybe it will be easier to clean up the big things, which are terrifyingly broken and seemingly out of our control. Maybe, just maybe it will begin with the little things.

Maybe the big things became so big because we stopped caring about the little things.

So walk your grocery cart back up to where you got it.

A good place to start the rebuilding of our society.