Monday Musings Episode 156 | The story of Sumaira and the burnt rice.

How many times, when you make a mistake, do you tell yourself –

” Why am I so stupid?”

“ I have always been so careless”

“ Why do I always do this?“

“ I’m just not good enough!”

“I have always been blah blah blah”

Since forever, the definition of forgiveness has been about either forgiving someone or asking for forgiveness from someone. No one taught us that we, more than others, need to forgive ourselves. It is only when we can start learning to forgive ourselves, that we can learn how to love ourselves.

Let me tell you a simple yet profound story about a close friend of mine. Her name is Sumaira.

But first, here’s some context. Sumaira and I have known each other since we were little girls in pigtails. Sumaira is a wonderful human being, very unique, very special, she’s the kind to do just about anything for her friends and that was her unique point.

She had another unique point -she used to be her worst critic and I don’t mean that as an expression. I mean that literally! If she made a mistake, let’s say X. In her mind it would at least be 10X. So you would find her apologising profusely, overdoing, over-giving, and a whole lot of other complications used to occur in her life because of this. Bottom line, she was miles away from appreciating herself or forgiving herself. That was her default mode for years and years. Till we started working and empowering her with some of the self-development tools and practices. As we started to work on that, Sumaira and I could connect so many dots. So many times in our childhood we had stories and stories of how she would over apologise, how she would blame herself, how she would criticise herself.

One fine day, quite recently, in fact, something beautiful happened. Sumaira was cooking and she was going to make the most delicious rice because she makes really good food. And as she put the rice to boil, she started multi-tasking like she usually does. She got busy and after a while, she could smell that dreaded smell. Yes! The smell of burnt rice! She came out of the kitchen and told everyone- “I think I’ve burnt the rice.” Her husband was sitting there and he laughed, cracked a joke about it, and then her child started saying something.

All this was going on and I was there. I was just watching and observing Sumaira. Wondering what was going to happen next, how was she going to react. What I heard next absolutely stunned me! I saw Sumaira turn around, look at me and then at everyone and say “I forgive myself for burning the rice!”

And that was just stunning! Why was it stunning? You may wonder because it seems to be such a simple story right? Click below to listen to the rest of the story! Do stay on till the end for a mini-meditation and share your feedback in the comments.