Taking the biscuit

Available for over a year

Good morning. A woman is waiting in the departure lounge, rummaging through her bag to pull out her book and her packet of biscuits, a man sits down beside her and a few minutes later she picks up the biscuits nestled between them. The man smiles at her, then reaches into the packet and helps himself to a biscuit! “The cheek!” With every biscuit she takes, he takes one too until they reach the last biscuit. He smiles, picks up the packet, and tilts it towards her. Outraged, she snatches the packet ready to unleash, but an announcement interrupts, calling the next flight. The man leaves quickly, she misses her chance and then her flight is announced. She gathers her bag, opens it to swap her book for her boarding pass, and freezes. Her own packet of biscuits is still at the bottom of her bag. The man had not been shamelessly pilfering from her packet but graciously sharing from his! We are taught in the Muslim tradition to make 70 excuses for others and that even if we somehow do, to imagine they had an additional one we missed. In a world that has become hyper polarised, extending this sort of magnanimous thinking has become even more important. It’s not to say we agree on everything, but that we can say, I do not agree with what you are doing, but I can see where you’re coming from, and if I can’t, I’m going to try hard, because that’s how I hold on to your humanity and mine. That’s how I reject this unholy fracturing that is killing us. I pray for a heart that assumes the best in others, that seeks to understand rather than condemn, and that remembers I am only as human as I allow others to be. Ameen.