Guacamole is Good; My Neighbor Might Be Too

Guacamole surprised me.

Really, I had no idea. "Just try it," badgered one of my friends. "I made it. It's good." But, my mind stammered, it's green. It's weird. It's gross. The stereotypes I had let cloud my judgment for so many years attacked my fading will. Those old biases failed me in a moment of weakness, and I recklessly dunked the chip into the dip. The world has never been the same.

Guacamole is good. Really good. It's not alone. I've got a big fat list of food I refused for years, content to live by assumptions that controlled my thinking and actions, that over the past 12 months or so I've come to love. Bruschetta. Chinese. Spinach and artichoke. Asparagus. Caramelized onions on a burger. The big heaping pile of squash and zucchini cooked on the grill tonight. I'm really looking forward to Thai on some wild future evening. I'm a new man.

I don't know if my palate changed or not, but I do know my willingness to expose myself to that which I believed I hated has increased exponentially. I'm eager to try food now, looking for whatever goodness I can find. I battle hesitation, instead saying yes before I've had time to waver. What's the worst that could happen? My worst assumptions confirmed? Then I've lost nothing.

Do my recent culinary habits amount to anything worthwhile? Not really. They just got me thinking about people and what we assume about them. For myself, as I'm sure is the case for many of you, there's a somewhat lengthy list of people that I don't care much to listen to because of what I believe about them. They're conceited. They speak before they think. They just want to complain. They just don't get it. They're only thinking about themselves anyway. I might as well be accusing them of being a foreign vegetable.

Sometimes you and I just need to try people out and see what they have to offer. It may be nothing. It may be awful. And if so? Am I really out that much?

Mez McConnell wrote this recently: 

When I was in New York a couple of years ago doing a training programme for church planters, one phrase in particular stuck with me. We were told that a good church planter/leader was an ‘agile learner’. In other words, somebody who had not shut up shop but was still reading, observing, listening and processing almost all of the time. They had not shut themselves down to people outside of their tribe or to people with new and different ideas. What I have learned is that a good leader does not shut down if the person opposite him is not from his tribe, is slightly irritating and may not even be sound (as I define it).

Say yes once in awhile when you want to hesitate. When your gut tells you no. Say yes to a conversation, to an adventure, to a condiment. It may not work out. In fact, it probably won't. But you just might discover something you've been missing for a long time.