The Window

One day a woman woke up, made her morning cup of coffee and looked out her window across to her neighbor who was hanging her laundry out to dry. She commented to her husband who was quietly sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper, "Honey, I think our neighbor's washer must be broken, or that woman doesn't know how to clean her laundry!"

"Why do you say that?" asked her husband who didn't move an inch or look up from his paper.

With a crooked grin, his wife raised one eyebrow and said, "well just look, her clothes are fifthly and she just washed them!"

The next week, the woman woke up, made her coffee and positioned herself back at the window to see if this time her neighbor fixed her washing machine. And again the woman complained about her neighbor not knowing how to do her laundry or that their washing machine must be on the fritz and how they must not have enough money to fix it. And again the woman's husband never looked up from his paper to indulge in his wife's onslaught of how is the right way to clean one's clothes.

After a month of the woman taking her place at the window, spying on her neighbor and her neighbor's laundry, she was surprised on day to see that the laundry was clean! And not only clean but up to her standards of being clean! She was in shock! Someone must have told her that her clothes were dirty, no someone must have taught her how to do the laundry, or could it be that they finally could afford to fix their machine.

The woman couldn't wait to call her husband and let him know this new hot juicy bit of gossip! She quickly picked up the phone and called her husband and with a certain glee in her voice explained what she had saw. There was a pause on the other end. Was her husband not understanding what she was telling him? Her frustration with him increased and she asked her dear husband why he was not as excited over the news as she was!

There was a brief pause and then a large sigh. "Dear, I have listened to you talk about that poor woman for a month now. So this morning I went out and cleaned our window."

This was a story I woke up this past Sunday. I have a very bad habit of falling asleep with the TV on and this past Sunday I woke up to one of those church on TV shows. I listened to the story and then listen to the preacher talk about how we all have a film on our window that we need to remember to clean off.

This story stuck with me. I don't know why. I think because in my line of work I meet people who are very judgmental. "You're an artist so you must be off the wall, crazy, tattooed or have more piercings than the law allows." Or more recently, "oh your a single parent - couldn't keep the marriage together?" (no it wasn't said that way to me, but that's what it felt like on the inside). I'm not a product of divorce. And to be honest my friends that are going through divorce didn't DO anything to be there either. It's a fact of life that things happen and either way, what ever the situation, it's tough being a single parent.

We all carry around a window that has some sort of film on it and we need to make sure when we are talking to others we don't know - to make sure our windows are clean before making a judgement or making a comment. Every one's lives are different and complex more so than the next. Something I think most people forget.