Near Expiration Date

I stare at the open bin while everyone else is busy packing leftover food into boxes. Expensive sourdough, baguettes, pastries, and cookies lie discarded. No one wants to take them—they're “too old.” This is the third time I’ve watched perfectly edible, good-looking food get tossed aside. A part of me is frustrated. These are donations—free, and once costly—yet they’re treated as unworthy. But perhaps what truly unsettles me is something deeper: the reminder that everything, even the best, has an expiration. Even the most capable, the most desired, the most vibrant, can reach a point where they’re no longer wanted.

Before volunteering, our leader reminded us that we are not saviors—we are here to walk with others, not to fix them. Pride must take a back seat to humility. At the time, those words barely registered. I left still troubled—not just by the food, but by something a young Bhutanese man had said: “I’m too old to go back to school.” That sentence echoed in my head, as did every similar moment when someone believed it was too late to start dreaming again.

Maybe I wasn’t angry at them. Maybe I was hearing myself. My own voice whispering that I’m too far behind. That I should’ve achieved more by now. That I’m past my prime. Watching others start careers, graduate, get engaged—I feel like bread near its expiration date, waiting to be chosen. I am the one who is being unkind to myself and projecting the ageism onto the vulnerable me.