The mind is slow in unlearning
what it has been long in learning. –Seneca
I don’t recall when or from whom
I first heard this story, but it sounded like something that could easily have happened
in my family. Probably yours, too.
A woman was making the family dinner and cut off the end of the seasoned roast before putting it in the baking pan. Her daughter was in the kitchen with her chopping vegetables and asked, “Mom, why do you always cut the end of the meat off like that?”
“Well,” the woman replied, “that’s what my mother always did.”
“Why do you suppose she did that?” asked the daughter.
“I honestly don’t know.” The woman’s mother had been dead for years.
Curiosity had the better of them both, so the woman picked up the phone and called her aunt, her mother’s sister. The aunt didn’t know either, but now her curiosity was piqued as well.
Two hours later the aunt called back after checking with old family members and friends. “I’ve solved the mystery,” she said. “Mom’s mother’s, Great grandma, always cut off the end of the meat because her roasting pan was too small.”
Hmmm…three generations later…
The moral of the story? What activities do you engage in strictly out of rote habit, or because it’s what you learned from someone else? Perhaps your authentic self knows a new way, a better way!
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar. –Mary Bryant
Authentically Yours, Laura
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