Yesterday I came home from the Mindfulness Tools 2 workshop and had this simple experience in Right View that I would like to share. The names have been changed to protect the truly innocent.
Before I left for the workshop my family had previously just left on a camping trip so I took the opportunity to clean the house including running a half-load of dishes in the dishwasher. Normally I don’t run a half-load because more often than not my children will assume since it’s half-filled it must be dirty causing me extra work and frustration with their dirty dishes. You can see where this is going.
Yesterday I came home a few hours after my family and quietly unpacked. Being a little hungry I thought I would cook something for a late lunch a needed a particular pan that was in the dishwasher. Opening the dishwasher I thought I saw a dirty dish on the top rack and mumbled in my head “Kids.” I was wrong.
Normally what would have happened is that I would’ve given a quick sigh of relief at no extra work and forgotten about it. Not today.
I thought to myself “Stop, breath, Right View.” I was wrong, I had accused my children of something they didn’t do and while they themselves weren’t hurt my “image” of them inside of me was hurt. I needed to apologize to each of them in my mind and heart. If I don’t respect that “image” of them I’ll have a harder time respecting them in person. I had to apologize for me too. Looking at the dishes I said:
“Alice, I’m sorry for accusing you of something you didn’t do and causing you suffering. If I had looked more carefully I would have seen the dishes were clean. Again Alice, I am sorry and will look more carefully next time.”
“Bob, I’m sorry for accusing you of something you didn’t do which caused you suffering. I will try not to do that again.”
“Charlie, I’m sorry for accusing you of something you didn’t do that made you sad. Daddy was wrong like we all are at times but I’ll try better next time.”
Next time I know I’ll look closer at the dishes because I just had to offer three apologies for my incorrect view. Ironically the act that my children sometimes do, not checking the dishwasher carefully and making a mistake is exactly what I had done. Now I’m more understanding when they actually do put a dirty dish in with the clean ones.
It was a meaningful lesson to me.
Thank you.