Nothing is Wasted
Nothing is Wasted.
Not the messy parts of life.
Not the beautiful parts of life.
Not the downright ugly parts of life.
Not the jobs that didn’t work out.
Not the relationships that took a nose dive.
Not the side jaunts off the beaten path.
Nothing is wasted.
All of it gets recycled, reincorporated, and expanded in some beautiful way to carry us farther along our journey.
Absolutely nothing is wasted.
I wrote the above in April of this year. I was at a writer’s conference in The Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia acting on one of my 2023 intentions: to take major action to become a published author. I listened as the women at this conference shared stories of the careers they’d started in, and the series of seemingly random events that brought them to this new place of pursuing writing, and how those previous jobs and experiences still serve them right where they are now.
My life mirrors those stories, and I’m not only talking about my journey to writing but also the series of random, or maybe not so random, events that lead us to the deepest desires of our hearts.
One of the many things I loved at this retreat was the quiet early morning walks in nature that I graced myself with each morning. The forest was alive with life and sound and movement that both energized me and created space for me to reflect on the conversations I was having with these writers. One particular morning, a phrase came to me as phrases sometimes do: nothing is wasted.
I turned that phrase round and round in my mind. What did those words really mean? Why were they coming to me on this walk? I strolled back to the beautiful lodge overlooking the lake and encountered another writer who was up early taking advantage of the early morning quiet to work on her book. We talked about my walk, our books, the inspiration that came from deceased loved ones, and the thought that nothing is wasted – not even the hard parts of life. (And we both marveled at this moth that clung to the outside of the window as we talked.)
When I left that retreat, I left those words behind. But then, this past month at the Women’s Fiction Writers Association 10th Anniversary Conference in Chicago, the words nothing’s wasted came back to me again, this time from the lips of a fellow North Carolina writer I connected with during the conference.
We were walking to lunch with a group of other North Carolina writers, stopping along the way to admire flowers, and talking about our books. I shared how I cried when I had to kill off a love interest in my book, and this writer looked directly at me and said with intention and absolute faith, “Nothing is wasted. I had to get rid of a character in one of my books, too, but he may have his own story one day.”
Her absolute conviction, expressed on that busy Chicago sidewalk, that each character serves a purpose in our writing and that we may use those characters again, brought to mind the April writing retreat and my other conversation with a fellow writer around that very phrase.
I could reason this all away as coincidence, but in that moment the phrase struck home with the message I needed to not only hear but receive. Nothing is wasted.
I’m leaning into this phrase today, along with everything these three words have to offer in the many facets of my life. I can trust that each experience, relationship, and hard-earned truth is not wasted, but guiding me to some new place and insight that I not only need but absolutely don’t want to miss.
May this phrase be our talisman—a hope in our pocket—that nothing is wasted. Not the messy parts of life. Not the beautiful parts of life. Not the downright ugly parts of life. Not the jobs that didn’t work out. Not the relationships that took a nose dive. Not the side jaunts off the beaten path.
Nothing is wasted.
All of it gets recycled, reincorporated, and expanded in some beautiful way to carry us farther along our journey.
Absolutely nothing is wasted.
