Rice and milk hold my character aloft!

I have a nasty habit of burning things on the stove. My particular preference is for milk and rice. I never intend it to happen that way, of course. It just does. Which is something R can never accept, and truth be told, neither can I, because when you set out to do something, you should begin with that sincere commitment to see it through properly. And this includes even rice and milk, which incidentally, are two things that are white. I remark on this as it will have a bearing on this account/confessional a little later.

The fault almost always begins with the fact that I leave the stove on medium and wander off to attend to something else. It is always with the intention to come back quickly to it, but have the process speeded up in the meantime. But this pure intention doesn't take stock of my other essential trait....my forgetfulness. I simply forget that there is rice on the stove, or that the milk is about to bubble over in that most untimely fashion, and only the unique aroma of over-charred remains wafting up the stairs can register the horror of yet another act of negligence.

Sigh. As people, we know how to dig our own graves really well.

As I have hinted at above, this does not go down well with my significant other who sends his disapproval in ether waves, that are strong and just as aromatic as the stuff of the burnings. Egos flare in return, cold wars ensue, and frustrations peak at the inability to get nowhere with it all. Until recently, when a more thoughtful and loving approach was used, with full empathy and humor. Such that even when it stung, the aftermath was one of true introspection and sincere reformation.

He wrote me a mail. With an insight he had had. An analogy, a metaphor, a likening of the whiteness of the milk and the rice to our own character and how it should gleam and sparkle with that whiteness and original state of purity. How the fire lighting the stove, are our desires in this world, fuelling birth after cycle of birth. Turn the flame of desire higher, and you run the heavy risk of burning and charring that character, muddying its original white into a burnt amber, making it an offering unworthy of the Divine. But stoke the fires to just that right level, coupled with your watchfulness and observation, and it will be cooked just right. The end result, being a perfect example of how it should be, a pleasure to every sense we were gifted with. To see, to smell, to taste, to ingest, to digest....

Somehow that did it for me. A surge of the original ego flared as usual, but it was the ego of feeling ashamed of myself. Of knowing that I was still capable of mistakes and to have them pointed out. But I am pleased to announce that whenever I set that milk or rice on the stove now, I morph into this highly indulgent mother hen, clucking and cooing over it every step of the way, knowing when to hold back with some inattention, and when to jump in with every part of me pulsating with sharp and rigorous focus.

The end result : Nothing burned or charred once in the last week. Amen to that.