Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff

by Chip Gaines

  Turns out, the ditch we’re digging is the length of the divide between us, the span of our differences, and there’s so far to go before sundown.

  As we keep on digging, if he lets me, I eventually share what wakes me up in the night. The things that make my head a bit dizzy because I love them so much, and the horrible, awful stuff that makes my blood run cold. I’m a talker and could go on and on about these things for some time, but I hold back. This gentleman has already been so selfless in laboring beside me, I don’t need to talk his ear off.

  When I picture this event in my mind’s eye, we look pretty different. Different height, different hair and eye color, even different skin tones. When he speaks, it’s in an accent that I can’t quite make out. All I know is that in this scenario I’m not like him, and he’s not like me, and that’s more than okay. In fact, it’s irrelevant. Had he been just like me, the work wouldn’t have gotten done any quicker.

  In fact, pretty early on in the day he identifies a way we could work smarter. I’ve been digging ditches for some time in these parts, and I don’t know anyone who does it the way he’s suggesting. But it seems a thoughtful approach, so we try it, and it shaves several hours off of the work. So I’m thankful for the fresh eyes he brought to the job.

  By day’s end we have spanned the whole divide. Without his help it would have taken a full second day of hard labor to get to where we stand today. I express my gratitude, but there is no money in my pockets to pay him for his work, and he maintains that he would have refused it anyway. So I invite him to my home that night for dinner.

  It’s a humble meal, but everything we have to offer, we gladly share. And it isn’t until midway through the meal that he really begins to open up. He shares his story, even the difficult parts, and I’m pleasantly surprised by his vulnerability. His words pour out like they’ve been bottled up for years, waiting on an invitation to share.

  Some of his words are hard to hear. He sees the world differently than I do, and several times I have to bite my tongue to keep from interrupting. But I hear him out, and eventually I manage to see things from his perspective.

  We talk until well after midnight. When I walk him out, we shake hands in parting and embrace. Then he’s gone.

  Had I not invited him to dig the ditch with me—really, had he not offered—I never would have known this man, not his name nor his story nor his point of view. And I know I would have been worse off for it.

  In the time that it took to dig a ditch, he went from stranger to co-worker to teacher to friend.

  It’s easy to judge other people’s characters and snub or stiff-arm them before even getting to know what makes them tick or where they’re coming from. But when you spend hours working hard toward a common goal with someone, your differences and preferences tend to fall by the wayside. Being down in that ditch makes a way for us to gain a new respect for one another. It makes space to really listen.

  If I populate my life with people just like me, then my world is going to be mighty small, indeed—maybe one person deep in all directions. If there are no opposing views, no fresh vantage points, then there is no stretching beyond myself. No growth. No change.

  Some people don’t want to deal with the inevitable growing pains that accompany change. They will choose comfort over confrontation any day. This kind of thinking actually scares me. Biology (and legendary football coach Lou Holtz) teaches us that we’re either growing—that is, changing—or we’re dying. And I’m not about to atrophy due to some misguided sense of self-preservation or fear of change.

  As Jo and I move through our crazy new life as semi-celebrities, well-meaning people are always telling us, “Please don’t change!” And I’m pretty sure what they’re saying is that they don’t want us to lose our authenticity. I get that for sure. And yet I wince each time someone says it to us.

  Folks, listen, we have changed. We are changing, and we’re about to change some more. It is quite literally impossible to build a company or go on national TV or have children and remain the same.

  What’s never going to change? Our values, our priorities, our commitment to each other and our family. But I hope that literally every other part of our lives changes. I hope that every new season and situation of life changes me.

  Some people show enormous resistance to modifying even a fraction of themselves. They’re not about to shift the way they think or what they think they know. They simply expect others to get with the program—to adjust their mind-set and fall into their way of thinking. How ignorant for any one of us to assume that we have a monopoly on right perspective and no one else holds even a piece of the puzzle. And how arrogant to just demand that people change for us without ever making the effort to know them as human beings or understand where they’re coming from.

  I wonder if being angrily shouted at or arrogantly debated with has ever swayed a single person? Are human hearts moved by being ridiculed and mocked? When people fling accusations with the presumption of knowing another person’s intentions, what possible outcome could they be hoping for? Who would ever move to their enemy’s camp under such treatment?

  I really believe that we won’t get anywhere, that no healing or breakthrough can occur apart from developing actual relationships with one another. As much as I love Twitter, Twitter feuds aren’t going to work. Actually connecting requires true face-to-face time. And that’s where the ditch comes in.

  I believe with all my heart that it’s only after working side by side with another person that you earn the right to speak into that person’s life. It’s a basis of friendship that can forge a path toward common ground.

  The ditch is where trust is built. Then it’s at the dining room table, laden with lovingly prepared food, that walls come down. It’s around the table that you discover you might, in fact, love this person you were pretty sure you were supposed to hate. It’s here that both sides are heard and hearts begin to change. Maybe not wholly. This isn’t some manipulative act where the goal is to win someone over to your side. The goal is listening and truly hearing. It’s letting your guard down and letting your heart open up. The goal is to leave the table no longer as strangers or enemies, but as fellow travelers on the journey of life. Maybe you even leave as friends who have chosen to agree-to-disagree on some things. This is where hate and fear begin to lose their grip. This is where you begin to have each other’s back even when you can’t fully embrace each other’s cause.

  The truth is, we don’t have to agree on everything to be friends, but a lot of people—a lot of people—seem to think we do. That popular and toxic lie has taken our beautiful planet and turned it into a battleground. The assumption is, if you don’t think like me, not only are you wrong, but you are bad and possibly even evil.

  Judging others’ intentions is a nasty business. I’m convinced we do best to steer clear of it entirely. Even just in my own life, I am amazed at the ways that my heart has been misunderstood. It’s character assassination, and where I come from a person’s most valuable possession is his or her character.

  I’m all for disagreeing on the issues. That’s the beauty of being unique creatures with differing thoughts, opinions, and perspectives. How boring would it be to all agree on everything? I’m so thankful that there’s a whole wide world of individual points of view and we’re not some sci-fi tragedy of collective thinking. But when it goes from having opposing viewpoints to actually maligning the other person’s character, then there’s something wrong. Challenge opinions all day long, but at least save your assessment of who someone is until after you have gotten to know him or her.

  It seems to me that we Americans are in an all-out war in this regard. It doesn’t feel too terribly far off to think that World War III could break out over just an exchange of words. When contempt has become the norm and misinformation is rampant, it makes way for a kind of rhetoric that may only be silenced by absolutism. Not trying to be an alarmist here, but I am deeply concerned.

  Let me lay ou
t my strategy to counter this tendency. Basically, it’s a matter of rolling up your sleeves and learning to work with people who don’t think the way you do. From there, it’s a lot of gathering around dining room tables to eat good food and talk. There’s only one rule at these dinners: if you come to share, you also have to come prepared to hear what is being said. Actually, it’s not enough to just hear; you must also listen.

  My hope is that each of these meals would contain long periods of quiet (other than some quiet chewing sounds, some sipping, and strains of the Simon and Garfunkel album playing in the other room) as well as the almost imperceptible sound of hearts being split wide open.

  The Bible has quite a bit to say on loving your neighbor, as do nearly all of the sacred texts of the major world religions. But how do we actually love our neighbors? I mean, do we even understand who qualifies as our neighbor? Are they the people who live in the homes directly adjacent to us? Are they just the people in our city or maybe the whole country? Or are all the residents of planet Earth considered our neighbors?1

  I prefer the last answer. I want to live in a world where we are all considered each other’s neighbor, where every person’s voice matters. I’m convinced that every child on this earth is valuable and worthy of dignity and respect.

  There is no chance for any of us to see eye to eye if we are unwilling to even look in each other’s direction. Hate masquerading as righteousness can sit in church every Sunday and no one bats an eye. Contempt and judgment clothed in concern says more about “the concerned” than “the concerning,” if you catch my drift.

  I am thankful to be friends with all types of people—tall, fat, funny, intelligent, not-that-smart, athletic, artistic, and every shade of skin under the sun, plus gay, straight, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and atheist. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list and it’s preposterous for me to suggest that I could be personal friends with every type of person on the planet. But these are some of the common labels that society uses to mark all of us for exclusion. If I had my way, we would all just be considered people.

  There are no boxes I’m looking to check by saying that. There’s no notch in the belt or pat on the back I’m looking for. I’m simply a better person for knowing lots of different kinds of people. They make me a better man. If any of these people are ever in a ditch and need a hand, I hope I’m the first person to happen past.

  I believe that we are all children of God, the whole lot of us. This means that we are all inherently beautiful, flawed as we are. We all have truth and goodness within us, and our lives were created with intentionality; we were born for a purpose. Every person that you happen upon in your lifetime has a story to tell. Every person on the planet has the ability to teach us, if we’ll only be willing to listen.

  President Abraham Lincoln famously built a “team of rivals” to advise him—a cabinet filled with people of opposing views and from different political factions.2 He even included three men in the group who had run directly against him in the election. Where do you think Lincoln’s famous “house divided” quote came from? He was living this thing out, and he knew he was better off with people who were willing to challenge his viewpoint. President Lincoln knew that the country would be better served by politicians learning to wrestle beyond the divide than by a homogenous, partisan set of officials always getting their way.

  I think we desperately need a “team of rivals,” ditch-digging, dinner-table approach to making connections with one another today. I wish it were the norm for Republicans to mostly just tune into CNN and NPR. I wish that Democrats were on a steady diet of Fox News. Mainly, I just wish we would all put ourselves in a position of listening. We can yell at the screen, get mad and sad all we want, as long as we engage, hear, and truly try to understand what the other side is fighting for and why. It can only be good for us to stand where they stand, take in the landscape from their perspective for a bit. Rather than ridicule and belittle, we can choose to acknowledge why they are passionate about what they are passionate about.

  These battle lines drawn down the center of our country’s soul seem to be costing us our humanity. We stereotype and mock entire people groups merely because they think differently or look different than we do. The oversimplified strokes with which we paint perfect strangers isn’t just hateful; it’s ignorant. If we could get a handle on what this “team of rivals” thing is all about, we just might become formidable in a way that this world has never seen.

  Early in 2016 the Elite Café, one of Waco’s oldest restaurants, closed down after nearly a hundred years of business. One of its great claims to fame was that it had the honor of feeding Elvis Presley back in the day. When it closed its doors for the last time, I barely hesitated before making an offer on this great piece of real estate. Jo and I have wanted to open up a breakfast joint for a few years now. Hospitality is a big part of what we do at Magnolia, so the restaurant business really seemed to fit.

  The Elite Café is a big part of Waco’s history, and we wanted to honor that legacy, so we really, really struggled with whether to keep the original name or not. We knew that changing it could be an unpopular decision here in town, and we nearly kept it for that reason alone. But as we considered all that we hoped for this place—what we wanted this new iteration of the old restaurant to be—we quickly realized that the new hope and old name were diametrically opposed.

  After much deliberation, we decided to name the café Magnolia Table. We chose this new name because we wanted our restaurant to be a clear representation of a place where all are welcome. The former slogan was “Where the elite come to eat.” To us the word elite speaks of a separation, a divide. Us and them, the haves and the have-nots. We are finding a lot of ways to honor the heritage of the historic café through the renovation, and we are thankful that we get to build upon its legacy with a new rally cry of sorts—one that gives everyone a seat at the table.

  I’ve talked about the dining table as being a place where enemies are lost and friendships are forged, where people really hear each other out. Magnolia Table is our symbolic offering to that cause. We hope it becomes a place where people come to the community table, enjoy great food, and actually talk with the strangers beside them—where instead of worrying about their differences, they find those precious similarities.

  Ultimately, we really aren’t so different from one another, after all. If we could get back to remembering that, then I think there is some real hope for us yet.

  Up until this point in life, I have never given one second of thought to the idea of bridge building. But Joanna and I were pretty dismayed throughout this past election year at how our beloved nation was behaving. It was bad. Election years have always been brutal, but this last one was of an entirely different magnitude. The hate and the fear and the overall discord felt tangible.

  I remember a night when Jo and I sat up late, talking about what could be done. How do people move beyond party lines, beyond religious affiliation, gender, and race? I remember the conversation coming around to the idea of bridge building.

  For as long as we have been together, Jo and I could for sure be accused of being dreamers. We can be idealistic to a fault. And a lot of our late-night ideas and dreams and schemes fall away, even by morning. But this idea of being bridge builders has stuck with us, especially as we turn our thoughts forward to the next chapter of our lives.

  This is what we want to do. This is who we want to be.

  The idea of bridge building has become something of a mission to us and our team these days. As of late, our midnight planning sessions are spent dreaming up some sort of bridge-building summit, a time and place where people from all kinds of backgrounds and mind-sets come together to help figure out a way forward. It’s basically our own version of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, albeit a lot larger and probably quite a bit rowdier.

  * * *

  A SHORT HISTORY LESSON

  WACO SUSPENSION BRIDGE

  The fact that I live in a t
own with a famous bridge of its own is not lost on me. The Waco Suspension Bridge was built back in the late 1800s, when Waco began to rival Dallas in size. Because of the sheer number of people flooding into our city, it became clear that a better means of crossing the Brazos River was necessary. Up until the bridge was built, there was no other way to cross the river for eight hundred miles. So as you can imagine, it attracted people from all over to this one place, simply so they could get to the other side. Such a seemingly simple idea was made possible by this one structure.

  The Waco Suspension Bridge was the first of its kind in the whole state, but that didn’t make it impossible for the engineer and the men who built it from the ground up. It simply made the work they did that much more important. When it was completed, it was the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi! This bridge became a magnet, and even then, it was a symbol of unity. It united both sides of the city, but it also brought all kinds of people together to cross it, even cattle along the Chisholm Trail.

  Bridges, when built strong and sure, are powerful to behold—and they change lives.

  * * *

  Building bridges is not a new concept. And although I’m not smart enough to be an engineer even of a figurative bridge like what I am talking about, what I can do is put in the hard work to help get it built. I’m happy to do the grunt work. I’m happy to get in the ditch and help build this thing by the sweat of my brow—hopefully side by side with a lot of other ditch diggers. Digging out the foundation for the piers and the beams of a sizable bridge requires a ton of hard work.