When I was in college, I took a lot of sociology classes. In one, I remember the professor sharing the (possibly apocryphal) story of a woman and her daughter who come to her mother’s house for dinner.
All three generations are cooking together, preparing a pot roast for the meal. The youngest watches her mother take the pot roast out of the refrigerator, season the meat, then cut the end off of it and put the small piece aside. She asks, “Mom, I have seen you do that so many times, and I’m curious. Why do you cut the end off of the pot roast?”
The mother says, “Well, I learned it from my mother,” and they both turn to the grandmother. The grandmother’s brow furrows, and she says, “Well, my mother always did it that way, but I don’t know why.”
At an impasse, the granddaughter picks up the phone. “I”m going to call Nana and find out.” After a few rings, the great-grandmother answers. “Hi Nana, we’re making pot roast, and Mom cut the end off the roast, and she says she did it because her mom did it that way, and she says she did it that way because you did. Why do you cut the end off the pot roast?”
A moment of silence elapsed, and the three women looked at each other. Maybe Nana couldn’t remember?
Then they heard laughter issuing from the phone. “Oh, my. Well, the only pan we had was too small for the whole roast, so I always cut the end off to fit it inside!”
For two generations, the pans had been roomy enough for the largest pot roast, but the cooks in the family were still cutting the ends off the meat. It took someone noticing the habit and asking a question to bring the outdated practice to light.
We all inherit habits, routines, and systems that made sense to earlier generations. It is worth stepping back to ask if they still make sense, or if the reason for their creation is outdated, lost to time, or downright counter-productive.
