Recently, a friend came over to my house for dinner and grabbed my pepper mill to find it empty.

She did me the favor of filling it for me.

She had opened the pantry, found a container of pepper corns and she filled it up.

Just then, I came into the room and saw that an empty container was on the counter and the mill was full. I looked at the empty container that was labeled “Allspice” and said, “Is there a reason you put allspice in the pepper mill?”

“What??” she said.

I took the mill, ground the corns that were in there and had her take a sniff.

“YUCK!” she said, “I do not want allspice on my steak.”

We laughed, opened the mill and removed the all spice.

There is a GREAT lesson here.

It is both powerful and simple and it can be captured in words from Sesame Street.

One of these things looks like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong.

Here, with the pepper corn and the allspice, they did look alike BUT they tasted and smelled VERY differently.

Let us use ALL of our senses when deciphering a problem. Let us ask for help and advice even if we are SURE that what we are doing is correct.

Let us open up to the possibility that some things look alike but are very different.

There is NO shame or embarrassment when we ask for help, and we can often save ourselves a lot of extra work.

In this case, the work was simple and we had a good laugh, but often when we misjudge we have quite a lot of unraveling to do.

Save some time, ask for clarification, then, take the first step.

It is a good life strategy.

Love and light,

Indrani