I have been in the process of remodeling my home in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, I do not speak Spanish and many times I have had to rely my contractor to translate for me. Lesson number one is that I need to learn Spanish. 😊
I recently had a situation with the gentleman that was installing my bathroom tile. In Puerto Rico when you find a product in stock you need to purchase it right away. If you do not, it may be out of stock when you wish to purchase it. Plus, you always need to purchase enough tile because it may no longer be in stock if you run short. I had purchased tile for my master shower wall and floor. The master shower walls took quite a bit more tile than I had purchased, but fortunately, I was able to purchase more tile because it was still in stock. Before he started tiling the shower floor, I checked stock, just in case I would need to purchase more, and found out there was no more in stock. With this information, I wanted to stress to the tile contractor to be careful with his cuts because I would not be able to purchase more of the flooring tile. This was translated to him by my contractor. Somehow in the translation, the tile contractor thought I was calling him dishonest and a crook and walked off the job! He told my contractor that he could not work in a house of lies! I was devasted because we had joked several times through a translation app and had a good rapport. In the end, this gentleman had created a story that I thought he was a liar and did not trust him. So, what did I do? I had my contractor speak to him again and explain everything again. After a long conversation, the tile contractor understood that it was all a misunderstanding and returned to the job. We are now all friends again. I decided to journal about this situation and figure out my lesson in all of this. Here is what I heard:
“Dear sweet child, I know this whole tile thing has been upsetting to you. Stories were created about you by your tile contractor. As you said, you just wanted to make sure he understood that you could not order any more flooring tile. He created the story that you thought he was stealing tile. And of course, that hurt his ethics and morals as he would not ever do that. So, it was the perfect storm. This often happens with stories. Here is an instant where you discovered someone had created a story about you. How did that make you feel? Pretty terrible, right? It shows you how damaging all stories are and how horrible it is to have a story created about you. It shows the importance of communication. I know this was difficult with the communication barrier of language. It’s difficult enough when the same language is spoken. What’s the lesson? You now know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the story. Doesn’t feel too good, does it? So be careful and don’t create stories about others!”
Have you created stories about others? Have you fallen victim to someone creating a story about you? How did it feel? Let’s all live in the present and stop creating stories!
God Bless!
Marcia
