The Miracle of a Milk Carton (And Everything Else)

Sitting in the bathroom, that solitary cell where countless concepts of world philosophy, zits and Suduko puzzles have been illuminated, I found myself contemplating a switch plate.

Hardened plastic comes from oil extracted from the ground, refined and molded and packaged and shipped and sold, until at last it reached a builder whose minions installed it. The screws made their own odyssey from mines to smelters to screw cutters to parts distributors to shippers to the hands that held the screwdriver, which itself was created by a whole committee of people and processes. The eggshell blue wall paint splashed down after undergoing its own alchemy of industry. The wiring behind the switch plate has a pedigree stretching from copper atoms fused by ancient supernovas to Thomas Edison to my anonymous electrician who cabled it to the lights overhanging the bathroom sink. Every single item I can see has a silent story:

• Someone invented it, and others have refined, altered and improved on the concept for centuries, perhaps millennia
• Its elements had first to be extracted as raw materials
• Someone transformed these basal ingredients into usable materials like steel, plastic, paint
• An industrial process enacted secondary alchemy on these materials, molding, shaping, cutting, machining, attaching until a product was formed
• This product combined with other products to create a more complex product (wires, plastic cover, screws and other components which make up a switch plate)
• Shipping moved each part of this process from station to station, step to step
• A company packaged it, marketed it, transported it, and sold it to other companies, contractors, and users until it finally reached its recipient and current resting place
• Yet this is not its end: someday, it will land in a landfill, burn up in a fire, or otherwise decay, perhaps reused in part for new things we cannot even imagine

At every step of the way, individual people had to contribute ideas, labor, transportation, and the actions necessary to make these things happen. These steps required hours, or at least minutes, from the lives of many people I do not know.

Ponder your surroundings and note each item.

Glass. Wood. Steel. Synthetics. Each a wonder, shaped by many hands.

Look in your refrigerator. Look at your refrigerator. Look at its contents, its components. How were those things made? Where did their raw materials come from? Who assembled them? Who designed them? Who brought them? What was the cost of materials, labor, time, transport? How is it possible that we can afford to pay for all these hours, these people, these things?

Look at a milk carton and taste the milk inside: cold, safe to drink, milk from a cow somewhere far away. Think about all the things that have to happen each day to get that milk carton into your fridge. Contemplate the folded, plastic-coated paper of the carton, which was once a tree.

The ancient world had seven wonders. Our homes contain seven million. How many souls have contributed portions of their lives to the place you call home?

Contemplate the miracle of a milk carton.

Wonder.