Today in the parking lot to the grocery store, there was a shopping cart that had been abandoned in the center of the lane.

I put it away.

That sort of thing irritates me no end.

You see, here's the thing: societies are built up from tiny contributions. Everyone can do something to contribute to how well it runs, and sometimes that something is just "Not making it more difficult for everyone else."

And there are little ways that we can contribute to making it better all around. My thing is shopping carts. The cart return tends to accumulate disordered carts, taking up space and spilling into traffic lanes, or just not lined up so that they'll be more difficult for the store workers to extract and bring back to the store.

I tidy up shopping carts. I get the one I return lined up, and I line up a couple of others. I prefer to get them all, but it doesn't always happen.

I figure every little bit helps, though.

I don't have to do it. I mean, people have happily deposited their shopping carts in parking spaces, scattered them in the road, misaligned them in the rack, all of their own volition. It's entirely possible just to do my part and put my own cart away properly, too, and not worry about bringing things back into alignment beyond that.

Ma'at is a choice.

Ma'at is always a choice, that decision to bring the universe into a better-functioning alignment. Not merely to not make it worse, but to reach towards functioning society, towards improvement. It is always an available choice.

Too often great cosmic concepts are presented as grand things, appeals to perfection. Ma'at is the order of the universe; who can reach to that? Ma'at is the force that gathers people together into communities -- untouchable, incomprehensible, that strange social urge down in the ineffabilities of instinct.

Ma'at is putting away the goddamn shopping carts.

That's within human grasp.