From the ways that we can bring our hearts together to feel that sweetness of the honey of life is another prophetic example from the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), which is at-taghadi, to look over something, to pretend you didn’t see, to ignore what does not please you. At-taghaful: You saw it but you ignore it and pretend you didn’t see it.

There is a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) narrated by Aisha.

When the Prophet Muhammad was in the house of Aisha, she was cooking the meal. Never would the Prophet say, ‘I don’t want to eat this food’. If he didn’t like it he just wouldn’t eat.

Aisha prepared food and it doesn’t look delicious or appetizing. And his wife, Sawdah, the mature one, she can cook man!

So the Prophet says to Aisha:

How about we take your plate and share it with Sawdah; let’s go see what she’s got over there we’ll bring your food over there.

Aisha knows what’s happening. So she’s carrying the plate and doesn’t say anything.

They get to Sawdah’s house and Sawdah prepared this beautiful dish filled with the Prophet’s favorite food.

Aisha’s dish is there. She’s just sitting beside the Prophet. So as Sawdah is bringing down the plate, Aisha, in anger and jealousy, hits it and the plate falls down and breaks on the ground.

And for us, what would our reaction be? We’ll certainly get angry.

But the Prophet smiled and he said to her:

Try it first (meaning how do you know you don’t like it?)

Instead of ‘why are you jealous’, he said how do you know you don’t like it, maybe you’ll like it.

And he took some of the food from the ground with his hand and he put it in my mouth, Aisha said, I tasted it actually is pretty good, it’s not bad actually.

So we ate.

He didn’t say anything about a broken plate, about disrespectful behavior, about ungratefulness, about wasting food… he didn’t say anything except ‘taste it’.

After we finished, he said:

Maybe you should let her taste your food. (Meaning why don’t you leave your dish for her. You broke her dish leave your dish maybe she’ll like your food. You liked her food, she will like your food).