For years a woman put her laundry out to dry. For years she also mocked her neighbor, as she hung her laundry out to dry.
It wasn’t always a loud mocking. In fact, it was never to the neighbor’s face. Instead it was first only a mocking to her spouse and inner circle of friends. She would daily stare out her window, hiding slightly behind the pleated shades, observing her neighbor, who was always washing and hanging the family’s clothes improperly. Her neighbor’s clothes always remained dirty!
If only she knew what I knew…
If only she was as wise as me…
The woman’s complaints grew louder. She told more people. Focusing on her neighbor’s misdeeds, poor process, and lack of critical thinking, she consistently made fun of her neighbor’s clear inability to do laundry properly. Granted, she was politically correct enough to withhold all denunciatory comments when running into her neighbor during any community interaction.
She would smile and wave and intentionally hide all fault-finding, editorial thoughts. But she would still think them…
My neighbor is ridiculous…
It’s not hard to do laundry…
What’s wrong with her??
And so the woman would generously judge away, making sure to at least grab a daily glance, justifying and fueling her conclusion of ignorance and stupidity that she had so graciously cast upon the neighbor next door. After all, she had seen this with her own eyes; she wasn’t making this up. Her view was clear. Yes… how stupid indeed.
After years of these neighbors never really communicating nor connecting at any heart level — since the internal criticism silently but definitively impeded the way — what to the woman’s wondrous eyes one day, all of a sudden appeared??
Shockingly, the neighbor’s laundry was for once, beautifully, sparkly clean!!
The woman immediately called her husband to the room. She said, “Would you look at that?! I no longer have to show her what to do! Her laundry is finally clean!!”
Her husband at first offered only a calm, quiet nod. He then hesitated for a moment, questioning how to say this, and then acknowledged he knew why.
Daily he listened to his spouse complain about their neighbor. Daily she spewed emphatic rants about the neighbor’s manifest faults and unchanging idiocies.
Her husband then said he had tired of the complaining. So he got up early that morning…
… and washed the windows.
I wonder…
Where are we looking at someone else and only seeing dirty laundry?
Where in all these messy issues and current events, are we finding fault in another because our own view is skewed?
And where do we need to start by washing our own windows first?
Respectfully…
AR