There is a show that my wife and I tend to frequently watch called "Kitchen Nightmares".
The plot of the show is this: there are a lot of restaurants that are quickly destroying themselves and a man named Gordan Ramsay [infamous picture posted above] goes in and tries to fix them.
What is interesting is that almost every single episode is the same. Because what is typically wrong with restaurants may change shape and size and appearance, but it always comes back one recurring issue:
The owner.
So each episode begins with Gordan Ramsay visiting the restaurant for lunch and sampling the menu. And the food almost always sucks. After a few seasons, you would think that the chefs at these restaurants would know that when Chef Ramsay comes, not only does it mean the restaurant is losing hope, but that your food is probably part of the issue and is about to get slammed and degraded. So you would think they would step it up a little bit...but they never do.
So the food tasting doesn't go too well and immediately the staff is gathered around and a conversation, typically involving a lot of yelling, begins about what all is wrong with the restaurant and every single problem comes back to failed leadership and poor management. But, again, every single episode is essentially the exact same thing: the owner, in the midst of this freshly surfaced embarrassment, gives explanation after explanation:
"The chef has given up."
"The people in the neighborhood don't like us."
"We don't have the right equipment."
"The waitstaff is lazy."
Once I even heard an owner say that the reason the restaurant was failing is because people don't come. Quite telling to the kind of ignorance going on here.
There is always a vast array of excuses, yet underlying each and every one of them is the same issue:
The owners have lost the plot.
And instead of doing something about it they have simply resorted to blaming everyone and everything around them. Instead of seeing the mess and giving honest, practical critiques of themselves and what seems to be going on, they take the responsibility and place it on anything they can find. There is no thought of their error, no possibility that they may have done something to contribute to the situation, it is simply the fault of everyone else.
From here, the show is simply the long and difficult process of waking this owner up; of getting them to realize that the problem isn't all of these external and technical things. The problem isn't all of these critiques they have for everyone else.
The problem is them.
The problem is them.
What I've found from watching this show is that it reveals one of the dark sides of human nature.
That the last person we are likely to be critical of is us.
Typically when there is an issue, we find all sorts of other reasons to explain and justify what is happening and we never stop and acknowledge that maybe the problem here is me. We are real good at telling the world all the things they do wrong, which is really just how they don't do things the way we think they should, while completely ignoring all the ways we contribute to it.
Because critiques and change and fixing problems is something we reserve for others.
Which is what is happening with the owners. The owners always have a lot to say about what they think is wrong. They are real good at critiquing everyone else and negatively pointing out the errors of the world around them. But what needs to happen is for them to take all of that energy and bring it back to themselves. The only thing that really needs to change is their approach; for them to stop worrying about everything else and just worry about what they can be doing in the situation to make things better.
But unfortunately, human beings rarely seem to be able to figure this out.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
My family has a history of being in the tile business.
Growing up, I was always surrounded by beautiful floors and walls and even ceilings that my father or cousins or brother put together with tile. I've even had the privilege of assisting them throughout the years; something that has shown me that laying tile is not nearly as easy as it seems. There are some pretty intricate and complex things going on to make sure the project isn't just a 'floor', but is actually a piece of art. From making proper cuts to using the right grout and spreading it correctly and properly cleaning the tile and an incredible amount of other things that I have absolutely no clue about...there is a lot that goes into it.
And so what would tend to happen is whenever we would go somewhere that had tile, my family would always make sure to give a little analyzation to see how the floor layer did. One time, I was with my dad who has been doing this since before I was born and has handled more pieces of tile than I think could be counted, and we get to this beautiful mosaic surrounding a fountain. Naturally, then, he goes up to it to offer his honest opinion. So I am looking at this thing in marvel because it looks stunning. The colors were melded perfectly, everything looked straight and clean. But he walks up to it and gets an intense look of concentration on his face and turns to me and says, "This guy didn't do a very good job. The grout is all spotty, some of the cuts are curved, and all the pieces on the bottom row didn't get put in straight."
Huh?
I thought this thing was perfect.
Essentially, I looked at the tile and saw this:
Two very different tile jobs.
Because when you see something through the eyes of wisdom and depth and you get up close to it, all the inequities are immediately brought forward and exposed to the world.
And this happens in all sorts of different places and fields and professions.
But it especially happens with people.
We get into relationships and interactions with others and there is a particular distance where everything about them is beautiful, they are perfect, and you can't see one thing whatsoever that would cause disarray. But then you get up close. And the tile all the sudden looks a whole lot different.
You begin to see all the junk and the spiral of negativity begins as we pick apart every single thing we can find wrong with them. It becomes very easy to start discussing all the intricate details of their tile yet if we would just back up we would see that it isn't really all that bad and that they aren't really all that different from us, either.
Everybody has bad tile and messed up grout and what we so often do is just choose to zoom in and focus on it.
And when this happens we need to remember that this isn't our job. There is a place for master floor layers to take a look at the tile, but there is a very big difference between getting caught up in the small negative details in order to create tension versus helping to make our tile better. Most of our critiques of people tend to be more of the former. What we tend to do is focus on what is bad or negative or off about that person and then use it to cause all sorts of disruption and disconnection with them.
But this isn't our responsibility.
There is this one moment where Jesus is talking to a man named Peter about the kind of death he is going to go through. They are there with another one of Jesus' followers and so Peter is hearing Jesus give him this quite depressing news and he stops Jesus and says, "Hey wait! What about him?" Essentially, Jesus is talking to Peter about what is going to happen to Peter and Peter starts talking about what is going to happen to this other guy. He brings the other disciple into a discussion that was just supposed to be about him.
So Jesus just looks at Peter and says, "Why are you worried about him? That isn't your job. Your only job is to worry about you."
Over and over again we see Jesus reminding his followers not to get all caught up worrying about other people. That it isn't our job to be analyzing and finding all the different problems with their tile.
Because we all have messed up tile, it is just whether or not we choose to focus on it.
Maybe what Jesus is trying to say is that instead of getting critical of everyone else's tile, we should just spend that time taking a look at our own.
Because with every single person, the flaws and inequities are there.
Including you.
And we need to be honest about this. It is easy to get up close and get engulfed in what is wrong and what isn't quite up to your standards and what pisses you off about them and what you think they could do better or could do differently. But we have to learn to step back when looking at tile. Because if we are honest, that isn't our job and maybe there is more going on than we can see on the surface. Maybe the situation of that human being is a little more complex and deep than we originally considered and if we could just understand them and their story and the 'why' behind their bad tile, it wouldn't be so easy to enter into such negative depictions of the people around us.
Maybe we just need to realize that the people we come across everyday,
especially the ones that seem to have some real messed up tile,
maybe it is that they are just working with a bad deck of cards.
That maybe there is a story there or a situation that our close proximity hasn't allowed us to see.
Maybe they have been places and seen things that we don't put together on first glance.
Or maybe they haven't been to the places and seen the things that we have expected them to.
When we enter into a negative posture towards our fellow human beings and we notice our critique seems to be more intense than necessary where we start coming up with all the things they are doing wrong and all the ways they don't meet our standards, we have learn to step back and be aware of the possibility that they may not have been handed the best cards to work with. That they may have been dealt some things that haven't put them in the position to act and speak and think the way you assume they should.
Which might require a little bit of empathy; of entering into their world and experiencing it as if it is your own. What we might see is that when you start feeling and seeing the world as if you are them, it becomes much more difficult to be so critical. When you see the world through their eyes and feel the depth of their mind and soul, it is like seeing the cards they hold in their hands. It is seeing their struggles and their limitations and their context in the world.
And when you see that and feel that with the depth of your being, it isn't so easy to dehumanize them as this negative perpetrator that is just out to get you and make your life harder. You can't put all of your critical energy into that anymore because seeing and experiencing their cards makes that sort of skeptical and divisive stance impossible.
So maybe instead of having this sort of posture towards all the people around us, we need to just take it and apply it to ourselves; where we no longer view them as obstacles to our existence, but rather neighbors and partners and fellow sojourners in the world around us. We stop seeing them with this skeptical and critical lens and, with nowhere to place the energy we were so used to expending on everyone else, we are only left to take Jesus' advice and start worrying about us.
Which makes us kind of like the restaurant owners.
Because we like to get caught up in all the things outside of us. All the things that are their fault and that they could do better.
But if they don't have access to the right cards...maybe this is on us.
Maybe the problem you have with that person or the tension that is being experienced isn't about all these things they do. Maybe it isn't about their failures or shortcomings or less-than-perfect attributes.
Maybe you're the problem.
Maybe this has more to do with your pride and your arrogance and your closed mindedness.
That anger you get when they do that 'thing' - if we would learn that our only responsibility is to worry about our end of it, we'd see that our anger has more to do with our lack of control or our inability to have compassion as opposed to whatever they might actually be doing. Because we don't tend to approach ourselves with the same standards that we hold for everyone else. We don't tend to give others the same benefit we give ourselves, instead acting like master floor layers giving no room for error on everyone else's tile.
So instead of getting all caught up in that, my hope is that we can be the kind of people that realize that we all have bad tile. We all have stuff that anyone could call out and use against us and critique and pick apart. We all could be portrayed in a negative light if someone really wanted to.
And we need to be honest about that.
Because when we are, we are then able to be the kind of people who assumes that maybe they don't have the best cards to work with, that whatever is going on may not be their fault, and, regardless of what they do or say or think, my responsibility is to make this go as positive as can be and to ask what I can be doing to make things better.
Because my responsibility isn't to worry about all the things they could be doing differently.
My only responsibility is to understand and experience their tile, acknowledge their cards might not be so good, and realize I am fully capable of handling this thing in a beautiful, flourishing kind of way.
And I imagine, if we learned to actually do this, the world would look a whole lot different.
That the last person we are likely to be critical of is us.
Typically when there is an issue, we find all sorts of other reasons to explain and justify what is happening and we never stop and acknowledge that maybe the problem here is me. We are real good at telling the world all the things they do wrong, which is really just how they don't do things the way we think they should, while completely ignoring all the ways we contribute to it.
Because critiques and change and fixing problems is something we reserve for others.
Which is what is happening with the owners. The owners always have a lot to say about what they think is wrong. They are real good at critiquing everyone else and negatively pointing out the errors of the world around them. But what needs to happen is for them to take all of that energy and bring it back to themselves. The only thing that really needs to change is their approach; for them to stop worrying about everything else and just worry about what they can be doing in the situation to make things better.
But unfortunately, human beings rarely seem to be able to figure this out.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
My family has a history of being in the tile business.
Growing up, I was always surrounded by beautiful floors and walls and even ceilings that my father or cousins or brother put together with tile. I've even had the privilege of assisting them throughout the years; something that has shown me that laying tile is not nearly as easy as it seems. There are some pretty intricate and complex things going on to make sure the project isn't just a 'floor', but is actually a piece of art. From making proper cuts to using the right grout and spreading it correctly and properly cleaning the tile and an incredible amount of other things that I have absolutely no clue about...there is a lot that goes into it.
And so what would tend to happen is whenever we would go somewhere that had tile, my family would always make sure to give a little analyzation to see how the floor layer did. One time, I was with my dad who has been doing this since before I was born and has handled more pieces of tile than I think could be counted, and we get to this beautiful mosaic surrounding a fountain. Naturally, then, he goes up to it to offer his honest opinion. So I am looking at this thing in marvel because it looks stunning. The colors were melded perfectly, everything looked straight and clean. But he walks up to it and gets an intense look of concentration on his face and turns to me and says, "This guy didn't do a very good job. The grout is all spotty, some of the cuts are curved, and all the pieces on the bottom row didn't get put in straight."
Huh?
I thought this thing was perfect.
Essentially, I looked at the tile and saw this:
But my dad looks at the same exact thing and, in his mind, he saw something more like this:
Two very different tile jobs.
Because when you see something through the eyes of wisdom and depth and you get up close to it, all the inequities are immediately brought forward and exposed to the world.
And this happens in all sorts of different places and fields and professions.
But it especially happens with people.
We get into relationships and interactions with others and there is a particular distance where everything about them is beautiful, they are perfect, and you can't see one thing whatsoever that would cause disarray. But then you get up close. And the tile all the sudden looks a whole lot different.
You begin to see all the junk and the spiral of negativity begins as we pick apart every single thing we can find wrong with them. It becomes very easy to start discussing all the intricate details of their tile yet if we would just back up we would see that it isn't really all that bad and that they aren't really all that different from us, either.
Everybody has bad tile and messed up grout and what we so often do is just choose to zoom in and focus on it.
And when this happens we need to remember that this isn't our job. There is a place for master floor layers to take a look at the tile, but there is a very big difference between getting caught up in the small negative details in order to create tension versus helping to make our tile better. Most of our critiques of people tend to be more of the former. What we tend to do is focus on what is bad or negative or off about that person and then use it to cause all sorts of disruption and disconnection with them.
But this isn't our responsibility.
There is this one moment where Jesus is talking to a man named Peter about the kind of death he is going to go through. They are there with another one of Jesus' followers and so Peter is hearing Jesus give him this quite depressing news and he stops Jesus and says, "Hey wait! What about him?" Essentially, Jesus is talking to Peter about what is going to happen to Peter and Peter starts talking about what is going to happen to this other guy. He brings the other disciple into a discussion that was just supposed to be about him.
So Jesus just looks at Peter and says, "Why are you worried about him? That isn't your job. Your only job is to worry about you."
Over and over again we see Jesus reminding his followers not to get all caught up worrying about other people. That it isn't our job to be analyzing and finding all the different problems with their tile.
Because we all have messed up tile, it is just whether or not we choose to focus on it.
Maybe what Jesus is trying to say is that instead of getting critical of everyone else's tile, we should just spend that time taking a look at our own.
Because with every single person, the flaws and inequities are there.
Including you.
And we need to be honest about this. It is easy to get up close and get engulfed in what is wrong and what isn't quite up to your standards and what pisses you off about them and what you think they could do better or could do differently. But we have to learn to step back when looking at tile. Because if we are honest, that isn't our job and maybe there is more going on than we can see on the surface. Maybe the situation of that human being is a little more complex and deep than we originally considered and if we could just understand them and their story and the 'why' behind their bad tile, it wouldn't be so easy to enter into such negative depictions of the people around us.
Maybe we just need to realize that the people we come across everyday,
especially the ones that seem to have some real messed up tile,
maybe it is that they are just working with a bad deck of cards.
That maybe there is a story there or a situation that our close proximity hasn't allowed us to see.
Maybe they have been places and seen things that we don't put together on first glance.
Or maybe they haven't been to the places and seen the things that we have expected them to.
When we enter into a negative posture towards our fellow human beings and we notice our critique seems to be more intense than necessary where we start coming up with all the things they are doing wrong and all the ways they don't meet our standards, we have learn to step back and be aware of the possibility that they may not have been handed the best cards to work with. That they may have been dealt some things that haven't put them in the position to act and speak and think the way you assume they should.
Which might require a little bit of empathy; of entering into their world and experiencing it as if it is your own. What we might see is that when you start feeling and seeing the world as if you are them, it becomes much more difficult to be so critical. When you see the world through their eyes and feel the depth of their mind and soul, it is like seeing the cards they hold in their hands. It is seeing their struggles and their limitations and their context in the world.
And when you see that and feel that with the depth of your being, it isn't so easy to dehumanize them as this negative perpetrator that is just out to get you and make your life harder. You can't put all of your critical energy into that anymore because seeing and experiencing their cards makes that sort of skeptical and divisive stance impossible.
So maybe instead of having this sort of posture towards all the people around us, we need to just take it and apply it to ourselves; where we no longer view them as obstacles to our existence, but rather neighbors and partners and fellow sojourners in the world around us. We stop seeing them with this skeptical and critical lens and, with nowhere to place the energy we were so used to expending on everyone else, we are only left to take Jesus' advice and start worrying about us.
Which makes us kind of like the restaurant owners.
Because we like to get caught up in all the things outside of us. All the things that are their fault and that they could do better.
But if they don't have access to the right cards...maybe this is on us.
Maybe the problem you have with that person or the tension that is being experienced isn't about all these things they do. Maybe it isn't about their failures or shortcomings or less-than-perfect attributes.
Maybe you're the problem.
Maybe this has more to do with your pride and your arrogance and your closed mindedness.
That anger you get when they do that 'thing' - if we would learn that our only responsibility is to worry about our end of it, we'd see that our anger has more to do with our lack of control or our inability to have compassion as opposed to whatever they might actually be doing. Because we don't tend to approach ourselves with the same standards that we hold for everyone else. We don't tend to give others the same benefit we give ourselves, instead acting like master floor layers giving no room for error on everyone else's tile.
So instead of getting all caught up in that, my hope is that we can be the kind of people that realize that we all have bad tile. We all have stuff that anyone could call out and use against us and critique and pick apart. We all could be portrayed in a negative light if someone really wanted to.
And we need to be honest about that.
Because when we are, we are then able to be the kind of people who assumes that maybe they don't have the best cards to work with, that whatever is going on may not be their fault, and, regardless of what they do or say or think, my responsibility is to make this go as positive as can be and to ask what I can be doing to make things better.
Because my responsibility isn't to worry about all the things they could be doing differently.
My only responsibility is to understand and experience their tile, acknowledge their cards might not be so good, and realize I am fully capable of handling this thing in a beautiful, flourishing kind of way.
And I imagine, if we learned to actually do this, the world would look a whole lot different.
