Season of Stretching

This is a year of significant stretching for the entire family. Especially our middle daughter who has traveled to China for a year and a half with both foreign study and an internship. To say that she is operating beyond her expectations is perhaps too simple of a statement. In fact, before she left, she swore that she knew what to expect. Even with input from other parents whose children were there, she shook off their challenges, stating that her experience would somehow be different.

But now, after four months, she is full of new experiences—some challenging and some life changing. She has gained a new appreciation for the simpler things in this country—especially name-brand food items where you at least can look at the packaging and know what to expect at first glance.

Eating to Live

In fact, finding good places that she can eat is perhaps one of her great adventures. Imagine being in a place where the food is at times so different, that you simply must try it to see if you can add something to your meal repertoire. But in one experience, she did find a place that was extremely comfortable, and she began to frequent the small establishment.

Now, I have never seen this before—or heard of a place that would cater to one client like this place did. After a few weeks, it didn’t take our daughter long to know what she didn’t like with Chinese food. Something about “fish heads” or unknown meats that makes a meal unappetizing to most Americans! So, if she could find a place that had a few items that she did like—then that was a bonus. And if someone in the establishment spoke English—then that was the coup-de-grace!

Different Time—Different Place

Mind you, being in a foreign country is different when you have no sense of the language. My own experiences include both Belgium and Germany, where I was at the mercy of kind locals who would provide assistance when they could tell that you were completely baffled.

In France I could muster up conversations by dusting off my thirty-something years distant French classes from high school. But at least the Germans, French and Belgium locals had seen enough Americans of every flavor that my presence was neither newsworthy, nor a cause for a significant reaction from anyone.

But for our daughter in China, it was so different. In fact, most locals had never seen (at least in the flesh) a foreigner who looked like she did. That is a sophisticated, independent black American female! So, even though it took a while, she overcame being incensed at the constant staring—or even the occasional negative reaction to someone like her.

It’s Not What You Think!

As I noted, this particular restaurant had become a place for her to get away, and she found herself returning more frequently. But after eating there a couple of times, she had become well aware that the Chef was always staring at her from the kitchen. Annoyed, she continued coming anyway because the positives of the eating experiences out-weighed the negatives in this particular situation.

But after coming to the restaurant for a few times she noticed that slowly the restaurant was changing. And in one specific area: her meals. She also was aware that the dining experiences were slowly improving as well. In fact, each time she came in she noticed that there was more of the things that she had liked—and less of the things that she didn’t like (which were always left remaining on her plate). And that is when it hit her!

What she had thought was the now routine bothersome stare from the Chef—was actually his way of seeing what she liked. What he had noted was what she didn’t eat in her meal, and he was actually customizing her meal specifically for her. Imagine that!

Additionally she noted was that the menus in the restaurant were upgraded, and the owner began making other changes just because of her presence. Obviously, the owner must have believed that if he could make one “foreigner” happy, then perhaps more foreigners would begin to frequent his small diner.

Adapt or Die!

Now that’s pretty amazing how the Chef—without ever inquiring began to adapt the entree’s that she ate. Maybe it’s just a cultural thing—but either way, it’s pretty cool! In fact, I began to wonder how that same thing could be useful for other situations in life. That is, situations where we begin to change ourselves—or our environment begins to change based on our actions or reactions.

As a business owner, it falls into the category of “Adapt or Die.” That is, when external market forces impact your business opportunity—you either change your business model, or your business fails.

Think about how many times that we notice something—or think something is one way—when it really is another. Dare I say, that sometimes we see something and base a decision or a whole line of thinking to produce an outcome that is flat-out wrong!

Maybe it just happens to me…but I am getting better. It is one area that I have given to the Lord where I know I can improve! See, it is especially tricky when we believe that the rationale behind someone’s perceived motive is negative. Wow…ever notice how we do that?

And it doesn’t matter what the subject is, because if you are on the other side of the fence, you will always believe the negative motivation for the actions of those on the other side of the fence. Makes you wonder why we can’t do the often quoted Rodney King Principle, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

In fact, that’s a place where we get stuck in this country, especially in the area of race relations.

What if…?

When a single young man is shot by a single policeman, we can look at the situation and see it for what it is. That is, an unfortunate situation where a police officer was forced to draw his weapon to defend himself or others.

But what happens when many (as in significant disproportionate number of) black young men—are being shot by many police officers, we must assume that there is a problem somewhere. What if before we reached judgment we instead said: “It may not be what we think it is…,” and insist on getting to the bottom of things.

This approach would be most desirable since we don’t have the full gamut of information to determine whether there are a lot of bad black young men—or bad policemen. And what if, whichever side you found yourself on you felt that there was enough (key word) integrity in the system to allow the system to “fix” itself.

But what has happened is that there a sense, a great sense that the system is incapable of fixing itself—and being left to itself would result in the system growing out of control with even more black young men being shot. The result of losing trust in the system requires the owner to inspect the system. To continue to conduct business as usual results in the constituents concluding that the system is unfair—and the result is “outrage!”

Adaptive Systems

Adaptive systems are those that are self-correcting systems. And whether we see it or not, the process that the Chef used was an adaptive system.

First, he knew what he prepared for our daughter, and then observed what she ate—and what she didn’t eat.

Second, he made adjustments to see if he was right in his assumptions. Was it the noodles—or the meat? Was it too hot? Or, not hot enough. Was it too much food—or not enough food?

Third, he made corrections based on our daughter’s reaction based on what she ate or didn’t eat, on her next visit.

But an adaptive system assumes ownership of the process. An adaptive system assumes that there process is not infallible and the owner at any time is ready to make the appropriate corrections to ensure the desired results are achieved.

But unfortunately, instead of correcting the system, we spend more time trying to validate the current system—when we know that it does not work. And instead, we rally around sound bites and inaccurate opinions and kind of lost the point of what it is that we are trying to remedy.

The point of this writing is this: are we willing to take ownership of the process? Are we willing to recognize that the process is not infallible? And finally, are we willing to make correct the system and stop looking to point the finger at “bad young men” or “bad policemen” and recognize that it is likely some of both.

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