A Life of Wonder

Here’s a wise video which I want to remember so I’ll leave it here for us. It’s a good invitation to return to creating and being present.

Have you noticed how we put the things we love on hold to pursue the urgencies of the day?

How much we love creating music, writing poetry, walking aimlessly on familiar trails…

Or photographing a moment which makes you smile, captures that rare glimpse of beauty you see each day and reflect on it without comment. 

Why do we forget so easily to spend the time with what we love?

What if we were in service of these things which we love that make us feel whole? What if we gave them a place in our day and our heart. 

They deserve as much.

They are, after all, more urgent than urgency. 

Gordon’s Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares is a lesson in life and business. As an expert chef and restauranteur, the scope of his expertise extends far beyond just turning a restaurant around. He turns people around. I am not usually one for reality TV shows, typically you can spot when they’re fake, but not this one.

Here’s how it works and what it means to me.

Real at First Taste. Ramsey arrives at the restaurant, forms an initial opinion and tastes a wide selection of food. Typically, chefs are defensive even before hearing his criticism, which usually is about the quality of ingredients, their freshness, or presentations. Ramsey has a gift for spotting whether something was microwaved. About 50% of the time chefs try to BS him on this fact alone. Once he has sampled a variety of dishes, and has formed an negative opinion about the food, he meets with the chef and his cooking team. Without fail, Ramsey’s lets them have it. It’s a mixture of superlatives “worst, driest, most disgusting food” with direct confrontation “how can you even serve this to customers!?” Chefs reactions vary. He verbally attacks those who are defensive. And for others who do not fight back, he challenges their level of commitment. Before getting into it to fully, he’s gone for the day.

The Confrontation. It’s fascinating to see how overly prideful people respond to attack. Too often, as is the case with a direct question about whether food was microwaved, they lie. They defend poor standards even though they know those standards are indefensible. And they will attack Gordon himself, especially ethnic restaurants that claim Gordon does not have the subject matter expertise to critique them. Even when comforting with irrefutable evidence those chefs attacked in this should would rather lie and avoid the truth the own an uncomfortable reality.

Shock and Bounce. Ramsey technique is worth comment. He doesn’t stay and argue. He shocks and disappears. This sets the stage for what the next week will be like. The creates space for the wounded chef and team to reflect and regroup.

Submission. The next step in Ramsey’s process is to observe and to shame into submission. He observes by watching chefs cook dinner, make mistakes and use a series of bad habits including platting food in an unpleasing manner, creating a mess, having disorganized tickets and not delegating to staff effectively. With each mistake, Ramsey calls it out in realtime with profanity, energy and blame with each chef misstep. The impact is immediate, shocking and stressful. Some chefs collapse and others lose their temper. Gordon also enjoys shaming both chefs and owners with a refrigerator inspection. He searches for whether frozen food has dates, if cooked and raw food are being stored together and the freshness of the fish, meats and vegetables. He also inspects pots, pans, floors, seeking rodents and the disgusting build up that happens when a kitchen is not cleaned daily.

Recognition of Need. But more than just shame owners and chefs, they force them to recognize the harsh realities of what they are really working with. Typically, they will provide excuses: the ingredients can’t be bought fresh every day, or I don’t see or smell anything wrong with that. Ramey’s relentless style and his deep expertise move almost everyone he encounters to exclaim, finally, “I need help.” This is the magic phrase. Once it is said, a transformative turn around process will begin.

Getting to Help. The way Ramsey gets people to see their mistakes, drop their egos and cry “I need your help,” intrigues me. It’s done with force and with skill. At no point does he soften his blows, or attempt to make people feel better until they show a willingness to change. His tools are knowledge, brute force, and experience to provide immediate, corrective and shocking feedback. When it’s applied over and over and over again within several hours–it works.

A Different Approach. This, of course, is not my style of guiding behavioral change. I much prefer listening, raising awareness around issues and developing a strategic approach to solve them. It’s slow and hard work, and it requires getting an organization’s leadership team on-board. While Ramsey’s process is abrasive and shocking, how satisfying it must feel to conduct it without worry or embarrassment, only the knowledge that your advice is the right advice.

How He Turns It Around. The reminder Gordon’s process is exciting. During it Ramsey always makes the same changes yet they always seem to work – at least for the short term. Here’s how he fixes restaurants:

• Modernizes the dining room look/feel removing clutter and cutting out gimmicks and cutesy design
• Ensuring spotless, clean restaurants and kitchens
• Changing the menu: Condensing the options for a typical 50+ to a 10-15 winners
• Changing the menu: Sourcing local meat, fish and produce
• Reigniting passion: Finding the “why” that motivates staff and owners and making them believe again that they can cook and finding their “inner ratatouille”
• Opening up all communication blocks and blind spots
• Acting like a leader by taking responsibility

Applying Lessons to Transformation. These transformative techniques have help me in my life and in my business and parallel the process utilized by Ramsey.

• Remembering the abundance of fresh ingredients (people and solutions) around you
• Focusing on doing less better
• Cleaning physical surroundings to provide for a peaceful mind
• Digging for the why to truly understand motivations
• Building a culture that seeks out negative feedback
• Behaving as a leader by setting and enforcing standards

These life principles are explored through Gordon Ramsey’s show.

Although each episode operates with the same formula, they are always worthwhile to watch because of the transformative change which occurs to the business and the people. I feel very energized by this show, and I certainly hope you will watch it soon on Netflix. It has a life-enhancing quality helping me remember that my why, like Ramsey’s, is helping people transform.

Dear Father,

I never thanked you for the suit I never wore. That white suit freshly pressed and completely impractical. I suppose you wanted me to wear it interviewing for a big job you imagined I’d have one day . An insurance salesman or rental car manager. But a white suit dad?

You avoided touching white: avoided the white table clothing that mom spread on Sunday’s table; avoided baby Sarah’s white angel costume; and avoided touching your hands on crisp white paper fearful that they’d leave a black trace. I’ve seen you hide your greasy hands and nails caked in black.. When I was eight you asked me to help you rub away the dirty. I worked so hard with that bar of soap. You laughed and laughed knowing some stains don’t remove so easily. I’ve touched that suit so many times, but I still haven’t worn it once.

[-a work of fiction. photo via]

“Dream bigger in sacred flesh, the star filled night demands more of you. Awaken my love, come into your intentions. Awaken, it is you who is there.”
– Zach Braiker

Chat Roulette was, for a very brief time, an internet sensation. It’s now gone the way of Myspace. Most people who use it seem to be millennials. At any given minute, between 3,000 and 30,000 of them are online and looking for conversations, fights or to fulfill their curiosities. I find it fascinating because every conversation transports you into a room with a stranger: you’re given a glimpse into their life and beliefs. It’s fascinating to observe patterns in how people interact with complete strangers. You learn things. Weird things. Like how quickly people anger when you move your head side to side for no reason, and how more likely they are to speak with you when you’re smiling, or if they feel like they’re observing a scene in progress. I’ve also noticed tendencies in people from various countries.

I wrote up this brief collection of experiences as a reflection on my recent time on the social platform. 

***

Strangers video-chat revealing themselves to each other. Often body parts are exposed, sometimes more. A girl from Michigan shares her story. A neo-nazi youth salutes, flexing his tattoos. Three Turkish men repeat the word ‘fag.’

A parade of hitting the next button. 18M, Denmark, studies my face then finger-salutes. Attractive Brazil women giggle, bounce, and repeat. A silent man sits in the dark. 32M Poland breaths into a mask. They float across my screen like dreams. 

 Finally, 24F Texas start talks to me. “Hey you, can you hear me now?” She smiles knowing how rare she is. ‘Clear as a cow,’ I say. She is amused, and I am to. We talk for 15 minutes or more. I show my paintings, her eyes widen. She shows her boots, books and awards. Why are you here, she asks me. For the poetic moment, I tell her. Then she leaves, and 27M Chicago appears. 

This morning, a text appeared on my phone.  CNN sent it.  I’ve requested text updates from them like this before; however, this update caught me off-guard. It simply said, “Box cutter used to called Massachusetts teacher….”

First, it states this alarming fact as news, without emotion, which is to be expected. Second, it provides no context for the update. If I hadn’t been following the story, and the only thing I saw on the murder was this, how alarming and unreal this update would be. Third, it appeared without any consideration to my state of mind or what I was doing at that given moment. I could have been running to catch a call, pick up a friend from an airport, mourn a lost pet, or eat breakfast. It entered my world, and cut right through it, leaving this violent image in its wake.

I did sign up for these little intrusions. Oddly enough, they make me feel more connected to the world around me. I seem to crave facts and to be among the first to know. What I find shocking is how this little context was presented, like a head severed from its body, this detail was removed from its context.

Gnarled trees, originally uploaded by N. Lee the Adequate.

I just read this article on CNN that discussed a suicide note that a US soldier, suffering from PTSD, left behind. One of the soldiers dreams was to move to a milder climate, like Seattle, rather than the heat of Arizona. This moved me because of its lack of grandeur. His dream wasn’t “I want to win 1 billion dollars or play in the Super Bowl.” It’s a practical dream with grounded by a desire to improve an every day situation.
Recently, I’ve been surrounded by people with huge, buzz-word dreams the size of winning the Nobel Prize or changing the political direction of a country for the better. While those are valuable, this solders note, haunted by memories of war, made me appreciate the smaller dreams I occasionally overlook.
In that spirit of smaller dreams, here’s a few of mine:
1. Write and share poems more frequently, and maybe perform a few
2. Interview, on camera, people close to me asking them questions about their life and mine
3. Teach a short story to children or adults in a way that brings it to life
4. Have a picnic with friends in the summer
5. Conduct a “teach-in” on a cause a small group of people I like care about and invite friends to share their perspectives
6. Listen mindfully as a part of my own spiritual practice
7. Write a letter and make CDs for people I care about (high school throw back).
8. Host another Rubber Chicken event

There is a list just as important as a bucket list, and this list is filled with the choices we face every day. By being aware of these small dreams and taking advantage of them, so much potential & happiness can be unlocked.

The kaleidoscope broke near the lighthouse.
Its colored snow dances everywhere.

My hands transform into the hands of a child
your eyes become the eyes of your parent

why do I become younger and you older,
every time the world falls apart?

On this birdless night I ask you,
“why did you scold?”

Your face betrays your answer.
It’s the face of your mother:
Sharp brows, tight lips, squinting, you reply,
“you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I walk on the rocks, glitter in the air.
You look a the sea.
“Waiting for a wave?” I ask.
“No,” you say.

The kaleidoscopes snow rises with the wind.
“Beautiful.” I say.

For a moment we agree.
-ZJB

Delaware River Fog, originally uploaded by Bob Jagendorf.

In the morning when the fisherman

climb into their boats like tombs covered in fog

headed into the river,

I too wish to join them there.

Mother says when I am grown

the fog will part for me

and in the great blue waters I will find

more fish than I can carry

In the river all moves slowly

the ripple of the birds landing on the surface

awakens me

but not the fishermen who are still.

I have asked you to join me at the base of this tree

its ancient twists know the enchanted fog

“I am afraid of the tombs floating in the sea,” You tell me.

“But it’s a river, not the sea,” I say.

Tomorrow I will climb into the river

Tomorrow I will hide in the tombs floating through the fog

Tomorrow a fisherman may find me and

not understand this love for you

or the fisherman that grows inside of me.