Follow the chili peppers

“how like the bumble bee I am in my work or my life
i see where i want to go
and in my panic
i forget to look for the open window”  -Marybeth Fidler

This week, I had an extraordinary experience with chili peppers, mints, a smoking cook, and big doors.

My friend and business partner, David, and I were in Phoenix working with an inspiring group of people whose insights were broad and deep and wide and who were playful and willing to move out of their comfort zone and “go there” to do the hard work of diversity (that part that is inside us, finding our own edges). It amazed and enlivened and encouraged and humbled us. We got valuable feedback that told us we are on the right track, a positive reinforcement that we are headed in the right direction, that we must somehow hold open the space to do this work.

The night before our session, we walked a few blocks looking for a restaurant that Dwayne- the-hotel-shuttle-driver- originally- from- Iowa had told us about, a place called “Enchiladas.” “Oh, look!,” I said as we walked, “there are red chili peppers painted on the sidewalk. How cute!” We walked and walked, but saw no restaurant. There was a house with lights around a window, but nothing that said “Enchiladas,” so on we walked in the baking heat. Finally a man appeared in front of us with a big-eared dog.

“Yeah,” he said, “you passed it. It’s back there.” So that house with the lights was it. We headed back and as we reached the restaurant, we couldn’t find the door. Not this way, not that. Where is the damn door, we said to ourselves, getting hungrier and hungrier by the moment. Finally, we walked the other way and found bright lights and music playing, leading us to a wide patio and the door to the restaurant which was, by the way, not “Enchiladas” but “Aunt Chilada’s.” There was a big sign with the namesake painted on it. We were looking for the wrong thing and we were looking on the wrong side of the street. And we had ignored the chili peppers that were right in front of us that led straight to the door of the restaurant. Three strikes.

After our session the next day, we stayed in town to work on an upcoming program, on our theories and models, our way of thinking, our business plan. The day grew late and when we realized it was time for dinner, we ventured out to find an Italian restaurant someone told us was just across the street. As we walked, we talked about our work, the session, our next steps, looking for the restaurant and walking, finally finding ourselves in the rear parking lot, that no man’s land past the kitchen door and the smoking cook, past dumpsters and outgrowths of weeds, around the vast expanse of the building that made up the strip mall until we came back around, finally, to the front, the detour having taken us far past the front of the restaurant…where we could see now clearly two huge green doors into which a man and woman were entering.

“Those doors weren’t there the first time!” David exclaimed. We laughed and laughed at the idea that the doors had suddenly appeared, that they weren’t there the first time around, that we had missed them, giant as they were.

As we ate, we talked and laughed about our experiences of finding doors over the past two days. Isn’t everything a metaphor? What does this difficulty with doors mean? Feeling so strongly about this new work, that it adds value to the world and provides a door for people to understand themselves and others, we’re looking for a door through which we can bring it into the world. Perhaps the message of our days in Phoenix is that the door is right in front of us and we can’t see it because our attention is diverted, we’re distracted. Or perhaps the way in is easier than we are imagining.

Or perhaps the door isn’t for us to go through, but for others to come in—maybe we’re already inside and just need to open our own door to make the work more accessible to others. Maybe the doors are inside us, not Out There.

In the case of “Aunt Chilada’s,” there were even chili peppers painted on the sidewalk that we didn’t follow, though they would have led us straight to the door. And as we left the Italian restaurant, I stopped to pick up a small chocolate mint that they graciously offered at the door to counteract the extravagant garlic-itude of my homemade ravioli. As I did, I got discombobulated and started heading for the bathroom doors rather than the front door which was bright red and as big as a barn door, with a huge sign on it that said “Door Out.” It was, ahem, unmistakably the door.

I couldn’t find that door either.

There was much laughter, big and loud and long laughter and bending over at the waist, laughing. And then we started asking ourselves questions: Why aren’t we seeing these doors? What is distracting us? Is the door we need right in front of us? Has somebody painted chili peppers on the sidewalk and we’re still not seeing them? Sometimes to see the door, do we need to slow down and step back?

This all reminds me of a poem by a friend, Marybeth Fidler, that she shared with me years ago and of which I often think:

The Bumble Bee
Originally published in DREAMING IN METAPHORS, 1998

a bumblebee flies into my apartment
it didn’t mean to be there–it panics
and seeing the outside through a glass window
it proceeds to push and push against the glass
trying to get where it wants to go
in its panic never moving from its task long enough
to see the open window just inches away

how like the bumble bee I am in my work or my life
i see where i want to go
and in my panic
i forget to look for the open window

so i push and push and push
thinking i should be rewarded for all this hard work
when, in fact, i am so frantic
like the bee against the glass.

Maybe the window is open. And sometimes the door is right in front of us. 

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

Pay attention to the signs around you—the chili peppers painted on the sidewalk, the large doors, the feeling in your gut. Step back, slow down, and perhaps the door will reveal itself to you. It might be much closer than you think. Maybe you’re looking for the wrong thing, looking on the wrong street, ignoring the signs: when your chili pepper presents itself, follow.