I was riding in the car when two items of contrast caught my eye along the side of the road. One was an empty paper cup carelessly tossed from a car. The other was a sign from a group that was dedicated to keeping the roadside clean: THIS ROADSIDE PROUDLY MAINTAINED BY (INSERT NAME HERE.)

Umm, I thought. In this world there are two kinds of people: those who throw it down and those who pick it up. There are those who are care-less and those who are care-ful. Apparently those who don’t care about trash on the road do not care about the extra work they cause for others either.

So it is in the house or car or office.  Soap is casualty left to melt on the side of the tub for someone else to clean up. Files in the office are not replaced leaving someone else to search for and return them. Trash is abandoned in the car until somebody cares enough to delitter.

Many of us vacillate between the two. We first are part of the care-less crowd and later return to clean it up. What a wonderful world it would be if we all stepped out of the care-less bunch altogether, joined the care-full group, and had a figurative sign erected over all of our environments stating, THIS AREA PROUDLY MAINTAINED BY (INSERT NAMES HERE.)