Stink of Garbage

On my daily ride to badminton, there’s a stretch of road with a heap of garbage. My instinct is to clamp my nose and breathe through my mouth, while thoughts rush in—how careless people are, why we can’t be better as a society. And in that moment, I suffer.

The odd part is, I don’t do anything about it. I’m not cleaning it up. I’m only resisting it in my head.

Today I tried something different. Instead of avoiding, I allowed myself to smell it. Reality, as it is. And I noticed—it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. The wind shifts, the nose adjusts, and often there’s hardly any smell at all.

That’s when it struck me: most suffering comes not from the thing itself, but from our resistance to it. We live in imagination more than in reality. By fighting what is, we double our pain. By accepting, we cut it in half.

Garbage is just garbage. But the same applies to traffic, to noise, to heat, even to the uncomfortable moments in life. The mind wants to avert, but often it’s that very aversion that makes life harder.

Sometimes the lighter path is not escape, but acceptance.