What I learned when I was a baking apprentice in France
"We're not going to make it through," the sous-chef in a bakery in a suburb south of Paris says in French.
As an apprentice a long long long time ago in this bakery, I stood outside of the store watching the sous-chef trying to maneuver a rented small refrigerated truck through the entrance into our backlot.
It was early December in France. For bakeries it was and is still the busiest time of the year. It's especially busy due to the tradition of having Yule log cake for Christmas. The Buche de Noel. Preorders for these cakes would snow in and bakeries would spend the majority of December preparing these cakes. For our bakery, we had so much orders that we didn't have enough refrigerated space. So the chef decided to rent a small refrigerated truck for additional space.
There was only one problem.
The truck couldn't get through the entrance into the backlot. It was too tall and the entrance was too low. There wasn't enough clearance.
The chef, the sous-chef, and the staff outside paused. Stuck and stumped. The truck. Unable to fulfill its destiny of housing those Christmas cakes.
We didn't end up returning the truck because, lucky for us, someone came up with a brilliant idea. Flatten the tires so the truck could get through. Flatten the tires to move forward.
So counter intuitive. Yet so obvious.
Tires need air, but, in this case, letting go of it helped us get to where we wanted to be. Turns out having a flat tire can be a good thing.
It reminds me about the things I believe I need. Sometimes it's necessary to let them go in order to move forward. Perhaps it's a lesson that can be framed like this. There might be times when we are too tall for that door of opportunity. What kind of air can we let go so we can get through?
And in case you're wondering. The truck did make it through the entrance and it went on to be a temporary home for lots and lots of cakes that brought joy in a little suburb south of Paris.