On Dumpster Diving

Most of the ideas from texts I've been discussing here have involved money, and compared and contrasted situations where would and would not have it. This time, I read Lars Eighner's essay, "On Dumpster Diving", which he wrote when he became homeless in 1988 and began his scavenger lifestyle by diving into dumpsters to find life's necessities.
Eighner's point of view in this essay comes mainly from his time as a homeless person, however he does mentions that he would scavenge around dumpsters even when he was still employed. Though most of the essay is spent explaining what it is like to actually dumpster dive, I feel that this is instrumental in the essay's power. There is such a gaping natural divide in how we interpret life with and without money, that it is shocking to think an employed person could partake in something that is typically reserved for someone without a job or a home, and even call it "surprisingly pleasant". I find this quite refreshing, actually. Eighner's open-mindedness on ways to remove stress from his life through abnormal means eventually translated to a skill that kept him alive for a very long time as he lived on the streets. Despite it coming from a need-based origin, it eventually became something he enjoyed and needed to know how to do. He went from doing it to alleviate the cost of bills, to doing it for the same reason villagers might hunt. I believe that this open-mindedness is crucial to unlocking our potential success, and we should all adopt it.