LIfe isn't always so simple
There is a TV show called Top Chef. The show starts off with about twelve good solid professional chefs. Each week one of the chefs is eliminated. The contestants really run through a gauntlet for a prize of $100,000 and fame.
The contestants are put in tense situations with perhaps not enough time and with limitations on what foods are available to them, and sometimes forced to cook foods they have never cooked before and don't want to -- like crocodile.
Their food is judged on presentation, taste, and creativity. The chefs do an amazing job. It is also amazing the things that can go wrong for even an accomplished chef. They too can overcook or undercook. They can use too much seasoning or not enough. They may combine foods that don't complement each other, etc. They can spill. They can leave the oven on too high. They too can do all the things we do!
Recently there were a couple of incidents where the chefs followed the Golden Rule. These chefs were very good-hearted people. They did what they would have wanted someone to do for them, and it sure looked like their choice made them lose. There is no question that their generosity contributed.
In the first case, one of the chefs took the last two eggs that were in the fridge. It's not his fault that there were only two eggs left. As I remember he was going to make tempura or dumplings. Another chef said, "Hey, can I have one of those eggs?" The first chef said, "Sure," and gave one egg to the other chef.
This was the generous chef's downfall. He needed that second egg. Because he gave it away, the consistency of what he made was off. His dough just fell apart.
The second incident I will tell you about was in the finale. It was down to three people. One of them was going to win the $100,000, and fame. This was the last chance. No other chances after this.
In this case, each of the chefs had an assistant. The assistants were contestants who had been eliminated earlier. The assistants were assigned to the chefs. The chefs did not choose them.
One of the chefs was Carla. She was an exceptional chef and had been the top winner on many occasions. Her assistant would have annoyed me considerably because, instead of assisting and doing what Carla asked, she made suggestions. Here was the crucial part. For the dessert, Carla was going to make some kind of tart. Her assistant say, "Oh, why don't you make it a souffle?" And Carla, who was some kind of angel, said, "Okay." I expect that Carla was thinking more of the assistant's feelings than her winning the prize.
The long and the short of it is that the souffle didn't come out right at all, and Carla could not even serve it. She who had every chance of winning wasn't even in the running for the Big Prize because she had said Yes to her assistant.
The incident of the two eggs was quite different from conceding to the assistant's suggestion, yet both can be seen as mistakes, though Carla's mistake seems greater. One of the judges couldn't begin to understand why Carol had given away her authority when so much was at stake, and I agree with that judge. Carla simply was nice and wasn't thinking.
From one point of view, both chefs made a mistake. (I imagine that if they were on Donald Trump's Apprentice show, he would have fired both of them.)
From another point of view, the first chef did not make a mistake at all. He was sharing.
God in Heavenletters tells us not to judge our lives according to outcomes.
But what we would do if we were the chef with the two eggs?
In another sense, it seems to me that the chef who asked for the egg and Carla's assistant both overstepped. To my mind, they both really had some nerve to ask. Their nerve put the first chef and Carla in a spot. The first chef and Carla, probably subconsciously, were faced with a choice of being selfish or unselfish, good guy or bad guy.
I also wonder sometimes if we really do make our choices, or are we somehow just swept up in life and all our decisions were made for us long ago, or we made them long ago. I don't know. I keep hearing that there are no accidents.
If I were still teaching school, I would now ask my classes to write a story about the first chef or Carla. I might also ask my students to write about if they were lost in the hot desert with a stranger, and they had a eight ounces of water in a thermos, would they share it? If they were lost in the hot desert with a loved one, what would they do?
Do we know what we would do?
What are your answers?
Comments
Gloria, one of your best attributes is your honesty in asking your tough questions. I think you are asking them for all of us. I know you raise questions here I often wonder about. Also, at least for me, putting an answer on a public forum is a lot more useful than just idly pondering, it forces a lot more commitment.
The questions I wish to address: “I also wonder sometimes if we really do make our choices, or are we somehow just swept up in life and all our decisions were made for us long ago, or we made them long ago. I don’t know. I keep hearing that there are no accidents.” Here is the way I am currently answering these questions, I see two contrasting viewpoints as described in the following two paragraphs.
One viewpoint:
We really have no choices, we only think we do. We are actually only puppets on the strings of the universe’s hands. When we believe we are deciding, we are truly only responding to the strings being pulled. We create our mental justifications for our actions after the fact and call them the purposes that motivated our actions. We are just going through the motions in life and feeling the emotions that result.
Compare that to:
Life is a series of choices. Life presents us with situations to which we are compelled to respond. While they may not have been experiences that we would have preferred, how we respond is our choice. We create our lives through our choices, and our choices determine how we are feeling in each moment whether or not this connection is consciously in our awareness.
As you read these two paragraphs, which feels true to you? Which one resonates best with your life’s experience? Which feels more like love and which more like fear? Personally, I think how we respond in our heart and gut steers us toward the truth.
Thanks for your interesting and stimulating questions, hon…….Chuck
Beloved Chuck, of course, you are right.
Interestingly, I had lunch with a dear friend the other day, and we talked about this blog entry. When I brought up the very point you did about how our choices are made, she had an interesting response. She said: "What does it matter!"
Do you know, I couldn't think of anything to say after that!
I wish everyone would post as you do, but many read and few post!
In regard to what choices my friend would make about the two eggs, for instance, she would clearly have given one egg to the other contestant.
I'm still not sure what I would have done, or even what would be the right answer. It's a dilemma for me.
I suppose we will have many less dramatic situations in life where we will have to make similar decisions.
Perhaps the assistant suggested souffle because she really believed in souffle. Could it be that the tempura flopped due to something other than a missing egg?
Destiny is not singular. In a field of infinite possibilities there are no shortage of choices. Misidentification of who is affected by the choice can be a bummer though.
Gloria, your dilemma about how you would handle the two egg situation, if you ever faced it, reminds me of another war story.
When I dropped out of college in 1968, I enlisted in the Air Force to be trained in electronics. I knew that I was about to be drafted into the Army and an Air force recruiter had promised that, as part of my enlistment agreement, I would never go to Vietnam. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid to go to war, the prospect was actually kind of exciting, but I did not believe that human problems could be solved by war and I believed what Jesus said in the New Testament about turning the other cheek.
After two years of training in civil engineering (this is not a typo), I received orders to go to Vietnam. My convictions hadn’t changed, so I applied for conscientious objector status. I know now that I never had any chance of success, but the Air Force went through the motions with my application, anyway. The point of my story concerns my testimony, under oath, about a hypothetical situation concerning what I would do if someone was pointing a gun at me, intending to kill me, and my only defense was to kill him first. My truth, as I testified after swearing with my hand on a bible, was that I would let him kill me rather than kill him in self defense. I had no difficulty swearing to this and it was the truth. I lost my case and had to either go to Vietnam or desert my military obligation. There is more to this part of the story, but in the end, I went to Vietnam.
During my first few days at Tan Son Nhut airbase near Saigon, one night my fellow airmen and I were awakened by sirens that signaled that the base was under threat of attack (This was very unusual at that time for Tan Son Nhut). I was handed an M16 rifle and directed to a spot to lie in the grass near the base perimeter wire. Intelligence had reported that a large group of North Vietnamese regulars, led by a contingent of Viet Cong guerillas, was about to breach our perimeter. I had been on the rifle team in high school (shooting at paper targets for sport), so I new I was quite effective with that M16. Luckily, it was a false alarm, but I can tell you this: the first person carrying a weapon that came through that wire that night was going to receive a bullet from my rifle.
This is probably way too many words to make a simple point, but I like to tell war stories (and people often enjoy them):-) My point is don’t give too much thought to this dilemma, it is a paper tiger. You can state what you intend to do or what you imagine you might do, but there is no way to know what you actually would do until the situation becomes your reality.
Thanks for you kind words, hon, this is fun…..Chuck
You have the best stories, Chuck! Yes, of course, we don't know what we would do in a situation at the time. We can have all the conviction in the world and in a moment, everything becomes different. Both ways. Some of us might become heroes without a moment's notice.
Senor One, you also make me think of so much I want to say. I can't seem to let this subject drop. Stay tuned!
Great story and excellent point, Chuck. So when is your book being published????
Well, I don’t know, Pam, but it sure is keeping me busy and I am enjoying how the process is evolving! If you want to be updated, I’ll be happy to keep you posted. The more I work on this project, the more optimistic I am becoming about it. Love ya…..Chuck
COOL ... and yes, do please keep me updated. Love ya' back.