The Power of Inconvenience

In the American period drama “Mad Men”, Don Draper is one of the top people in the high-pressure world of advertising. The show follows Don and others on a dramatic corporate and personal adventure. Of all the poignant scenes in the show’s seven seasons, there is one that stands out in my memory more than all the rest. And it’s not the scene where Lois runs over Guy’s foot with a lawnmower.

It’s the one where Don is having a simple picnic with his wife and kids. They’re on the grass under some trees in a public space. They’re about ready to leave. Don finishes his drink, and then casually throws his can far out onto the grass. He is ironically concerned with checking the kids’ hands to make sure they don’t get the car messy. They gather their things. Then, Don’s wife Betty casually takes the end of the tablecloth they had spread out on the ground and shakes off the used napkins, paper plates, and other trash onto the grass. She turns and walks back to the car, without a second thought.

While this kind of behavior was common and even socially acceptable decades ago, this is no longer the case. Over 90% of Americans believe that litter is a problem. In a world that is politically and culturally so divided, the nearly universal opinion on littering should certainly represent some common ground. And yet, while the amount of litter on our roadways and waterways has reduced significantly in the last ten years, there’s still a lot of litter out there for a group of people where 90% of them say it’s a problem.

There are plenty of reasons people litter. But one of the most common reasons is convenience. The proximity of an appropriate waste receptacle is an excellent predictor of the amount of littering that happens. If there’s not a trash can close by, then people may even relieve themselves of responsibility, saying “Oh well. If they didn’t want trash here they should have given me a place to put it.” We may say that we value clean land and clean water, but it seems that many of us value it less when there’s not a trash can close by.

But when doing the right thing is inconvenient, the way we act tells us something about ourselves. The power of inconvenience is the power to reveal ourselves as we really are, and to see how much we actually care about the things we say that we care about.

The real test of our values will always be how we live them when it becomes inconvenient.