Stale Bread

Sometimes on our travels, we stop more than once a week to stock up on groceries and occasionally just for some few items forgotten or to make something special. Once in a while we end up with an excess of bread, a half eaten loaf of plain whole wheat, a newer one, an artisan French bread that was a quick impulse buy and maybe a little pack of King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls.
The frugal person inside feels the need to eat the oldest loaf of Nature’s Own wheat bread first since it’s expiration date is rapidly approaching or already past. So we eat a stiff sandwich on stale bread congratulating ourselves on doing the right thing. Meanwhile, the next loaf in line is aging and by the time we finish the first stale loaf, the second one is expired and then the third and so on.
I got to thinking that this is the way we often subconsciously live our lives, living in the past and eating the stale products of being mired in routine thinking and habitual activity. Tomorrow’s thoughts are pretty much the same thoughts as yesterday’s. Negative self talk, how we react to others, fear of the unknown, all these things can become stiffened left unexamined and set at the back of the shelf to corrode over time.
If we go ahead and toss that oldest loaf of old ideas and rootedness in past behaviors, we can have a fresh sandwich every day and open our eyes to see things differently. Maybe closer to how they truly are than in the twisted way that our habitual thinking likes to categorize and quickly put things into a known box of classification that feels safe to us. 
It might seem difficult and feel wasteful to throw away those “perfectly good” slices of dry tasteless bread, but tossing the old and not accumulating hardened ideas and stances allows the possibility of experiencing the world with fresh eyes going forward. And if I once again find too many loaves queuing up in the pantry, I know that if I let go of some everything will still be o.k. 
I just put the Nature’s Own in the rubbish bin.