Everyone is prone to making mistakes. One’s greatness doesn’t lie in the non-committal of mistake but in seeking forgiveness soon upon realizing it. Mistakes are of two types. One, that directly break God’s rule and hence you go against His will. Second, that hurt feelings of those you are dealing with. Actually, almost every mistake involves both hurting people and breaking God’s law simultaneously. So this means one has to seek forgiveness of the person concerned and then of the God.

You know seeking forgiveness from a person is a tough thing. But forgiving someone is the toughest. How strangely we all are connected in the web of emotions! But things are different in the divine realm. God does forgive. Anyway, those were just random thoughts about committing mistakes and seeking forgiveness.

I had read Rumi’s poem quoted below, in a personal letter from Qudratullah Shahaab to Mumtaz Mufti, printed in Alakh Nagri. Mumtaz Mufti had hard time battling and curbing his temptations even at quite an old age. He knew he was running after mirages. Yes, who would expect a man close to 70 to be fallen for a woman in 20s and then roam the roads of Rawalpindi with her on the two-wheeler. I appreciate Mumtaz Mufti’s honesty. It takes loads of guts to admit the eccentricities of one’s nature. When he got sick, he wrote to Qudratullah and he somehow helped him out of that quagmire. Mumtaz Mufti admitted he loved confiding in him because he, unlike others, never admonished him. Perhaps that is why he took him to be a Sufi – a saint.

This poem basically says what we usually hear from elders is that the doors of divine forgiveness remain open so one shouldn’t give up hope that he/she wouldn’t be forgiven.

Come, come, whoever you are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
It doesn’t matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come