Self Myth #1

"I am very flexible."

On the surface, yes I am. I am easy going. I most often don't sweat the small stuff. I like change. I am interested in the infinite variety of human experience. I like life's ironies. Those remarks are mostly true.

But, if I seek my truth, there are some parts of me that are like steel, not flexible at all. And, as far as I can put it together, I have always been this way. Yesterday. I backed off a scene of injustice and I regretted it all day.

Some mornings and many evenings I take a cup of coffee at a rather expensive place in Granada. I don't remember the name. I call it Lilly's because she was the previous owner. I go there for the breeze and the commanding view of the plaza and the Cathedral. Endless action, endless noise. Yesterday morning a very loud, very red faced American man, a big guy, went off on the waiter. He really blasted the kid. Then the kid got flustered and couldn't do anything right. The guy kept going inside to yell his further complaints and then the complaints got more general. The place sucked. The internet sucked, the coffee sucked. I wanted to step and and tell the guy to cool it, but he really looked like one more thing and he would go postal.

There is a high likelihood that he was from Texas and a high likelihood that he had a gun. I did nothing. The waiter then was defeated. He brought the wrong change. The cashier had included a tip which set the guy off again. I did nothing and I felt badly. This is the place in me that is not usually flexible. I can't stand oppression. I try to be a voice for the voiceless. I should have said something.

I don't want to be flexible when it is a matter of right and wrong, of injustice. There is always a ton of injustice in the world, we know that, but when something is right there, the least I can do is to speak up. Now that I have made this all about me, I have come up with an idea and I will act on it.

This culture has not traditionally been a restaurant culture. After all, it is a peasant culture and one of the poorest countries in the Americas. The wait people are starting to get training at professional courses but many have no clue. I will go and tell this kid a few simple things that will make his work go better, like to bring a spoon when someone orders coffee and sugar. As it is the customer waits for the spoon until the waiter shows up again and then goes back inside to get the spoon and by then the coffee is cool and the mood is sliding into the negative.

What got me going was this idea of our idea of ourselves. I am not that flexible about a lot of things. I realize this now. I have to change the story I tell myself regardless of how others perceive me.