Why I Left Half the Dishes

As I was standing at the sink washing dishes this morning I fell into one of my thinking habits, you know, the one called WHY. I am forever trying to figure out and make sense of why we do things the way we do, why we relate to each other in the dysfunctional ways that continue to annoy us but we can't seem to change or find better ways of thinking and speaking. I realize that one problem is that our actions and words are usually only symptoms of deeper realities that, at first glance, don't appear to be related to what is currently going on. When we can uncover the deeper pain and address the unmet needs that haunt us from inside much of our external symptoms will change on their own. But the why question still persists. Of course the obvious is true – I haven't dealt with most of the underlying stuff yet. But I want to understand why certain reactions are so predictable. Will understanding them cause them to change? Well that is another good question I can't answer yet. For instance, while I was washing the large pile of dirty dishes left over from the last round of holiday feasting the urge came to me to just wash the dishes, glasses and silverware and leave the big pans and large miscellaneous items for someone else to finish. Now I'm sure I can already predict what others are thinking right now if they are reading this. “What a bloke! How can you be so lazy? Why don't you just do all the dishes instead of leaving half of them for someone else?” Well, that's just what I'm talking about. Why is it that I can predictably garner more animosity by voluntarily doing over half the dishes and leaving some unwashed than by doing none at all? It's the half-empty glass syndrome. I realize that I do the same thing to others. When someone tries to do something and it doesn't measure up I tend to have a critical eye on how it could have been better instead of starting with an attitude of gratitude and expressing appreciation. This springs out of the atmosphere of shame and force that most of us are so familiar with. In this case the person wondering why I did only half a job would somehow believe that making me feel shamed for my decision would somehow motivate me to be more industrious. Somehow that has never been a positive inspiration for me. It usually causes me to determine to just leave the dishes dirty next time so I can avoid being condemned again. I might receive flak about never being helpful but it will be less intense than being criticized for trying to partially helpful. Of course this is just one of many illustrations of the same kind of thing. Most of us are familiar with these scenarios and are probably both victims and perpetrators involved with them. As I thought about what undergirds these predictable interactions of dysfunctionality it seemed to me to be the familiar weapon of force. We believe that shame, anger, disgust, demeaning remarks will create enough inward pain to force another to conform to our desires for their behavior changes. Sometimes it may produce those external changes but always at the cost of loss of healthy bonding. We are creating fear bonds instead of love bonds, and fear bonds produce dysfunctional relations and behaviors. So what did I do this morning? Believe it or not, I left the rest of the odd-sized, over-sized dirty items for someone else to do just because I wanted to exercise my freedom to do so and to see if the predicted reactions would indeed play out again. Yes I might be the one who ends up doing them later. But I also have the freedom to stop and do something else I deem more important right now. I do not want to allow in “parent” inside of my head to be dictator and shame me any more than I want my wife or children to do it to me from the outside. I want to be valued whether I do this dishes or not. And isn't that what grace is all about?