Four Rotisserie Chickens and an Apology
How quickly we judge ourselves for not being everything
We stopped at Whole Foods on the way home from church. A quick trip for sourdough bread.
We got in line behind a woman unloading four rotisserie chickens from her cart.
Never shy, I asked.
“What are you doing with all the chickens?”
She said her doctor keeps telling her to eat more protein. This was lunch for the week.
Then she added it.
“I’m being lazy.”
What she meant was she wasn’t roasting them herself.
What I was thinking, standing there with my sourdough, was that I should run back and grab one for our fridge.
Meal prep is not my strong suit. I’ve found my workarounds. I am not well when I am hungry... ask my husband. The mean-spirited teenager shows up in those moments. Anything longer than 30 min prep time can quickly bring out that little monster.
But I kept thinking about her on the drive home.
Four chickens. A doctor’s order. A solution she’d already executed before she even got to the register. And in the time it took her to load them onto the conveyor belt, she had judged herself for it.
I wasn’t judging her. I was taking notes.
We do this. Quickly. Reflexively. We solve a problem and then apologize for the way we solved it. We find the smart workaround and call it the lazy one. We do the thing that actually serves us and then pre-empt the criticism by criticizing ourselves first.
Nobody asked her if she cooked the chickens.
She volunteered the verdict.
We don’t wait to be judged. We volunteer the verdict ourselves.
Here’s the part I didn’t say out loud at the register.
Hiding below my sourdough was my own protein time-saver. Amylu chicken sausages and crumbles. If you’re a Bobby Approved kind of person, the only knock is that the chicken, while free of antibiotics, “should be non-GMO or organic or, ideally, pasture-raised”.
I live 80/20. I am willing to color outside the lines for an easy Italian dinner on a Tuesday.
But I noticed something.
The judgment she was avoiding?
I’ve been avoiding it too.
I have a small list of things like this. Quiet shortcuts I’ve collected over the years that genuinely make my life easier and my body better. And I rarely share them.
Not because I’m protecting them.
Because sharing them would mean admitting I’m not doing the thing the “right” way.
Which is its own version of four chickens and an apology.
So this week, a small practice.
Catch yourself reaching for “lazy” or “cheating” or “shortcut” to describe something that’s actually working. Notice who you’re apologizing to.
Most of the time, no one is asking.
I’ll go first.
The chicken sausages are in the fridge.
Always EDITing,
Leslie
P.S. I’m about to start something new. An aligned experiment. It makes me both excited and nervous. It’s the kind of thing where I can already feel where the wobble lives. The voice that wants to call the smart move the lazy one. The reflex to apologize before anyone has questioned anything.
I’m learning to exercise the muscle myself.
More on that in the weeks to come.
I kind of hate that it’s a very feminine thing to expect judgement at all times, while guys just do whatever without apologizing. We need to stop that!
I’m always down for an easy recipe. Yes please👏