IT ALL STARTED WITH A SPOONFUL OF CLOTTED CREAM

Betül had never liked clotted cream for as long as she could remember. It would be on the breakfast table when she was a child, and her mother would insist she eat it, but she would wrinkle her nose every time and say she didn’t want it.

Years passed, she got married, had children. Just like her mother had done years ago, she put clotted cream on the breakfast table every morning. When her daughter, eating it happily, asked, “Mom, why don’t you eat it?” she had no real answer. She simply said, “I don’t like it much,” but deep down she wondered why. Why didn’t she like it?

One day, a friend invited her for breakfast. She loved how the plates were prepared—neatly separated, just like in restaurants. Nothing was mixed together, and for dessert there was honey with clotted cream. She wanted to object, but she didn’t want to dampen her friend’s enthusiasm.

Suddenly, while chatting about this and that, she realized she had eaten the clotted cream along with the honey. She was surprised, but at the same time she thought, It’s not that bad… it actually goes quite well with honey.

Her friend looked at her with a face that said, “Is something wrong?” so she began explaining.

“Yeşim, honestly, I’ve never eaten clotted cream in my life until today. While talking to you, I suddenly realized that I ate it with honey. It feels strange to eat something I used to say I’d never touch… but I also feel relieved. That’s why I’m so surprised.”

“Oh Betül, I was wondering what happened! You know, I used to have something like that too. I couldn’t touch peaches because of their fuzz. I thought I could never, ever do it. Then guess what? My son suddenly became obsessed with peaches. It’s his favorite fruit. What could I do? I had to touch them, wash them, peel them—even though it made my skin crawl at first. Slowly I realized I was moving away from that ‘I could never do it’ mindset. Then I pushed myself even more. In the end, I got over it—thank goodness. My advice to you is the same: face it. After all, doesn’t your mind always make the scenario seem worse than the real thing?”

“How so? I didn’t quite get that.”

“Well: Sometimes when a person gets a cut, they only start to feel the pain after they see it. Until they see it, they barely notice. Same with people who get shot—you tell them they’ve been hit, and they faint the moment they see the blood. When you see the cut, your mind suddenly brings up every piece of information you know about injuries, and you start imagining it all happening to you. Thoughts rush in—What if I bleed out? What if it reached the bone? What if they have to amputate? You think it’s much worse than it really is. The same thing happens with pleasure, actually. Sometimes you look forward to a day so much—an outing, or seeing someone you love. But when the moment comes, you realize it’s not as delightful as you imagined. In your mind you create pure joy. But in reality, something always goes a little wrong. You can’t reach the happiness you imagined. Because people often experience both pain and pleasure much more intensely in their minds than in real life.”

“So the feeling I thought I would have when eating clotted cream, or the feeling you thought you’d have when touching a peach fuzz—that feeling is actually more intense in the mind than in reality!”

“Exactly. Since the day I read about this, I’ve been confronting every ‘I could never’ situation in my life.”

She had no idea that this conversation would open brand new doors for her. On her way home, she couldn’t help wondering: What else have I been restricting myself from by saying ‘I could never’?

She remembered how much she disliked fava beans. Because she didn’t like them, she had never cooked them for her children. On her way home, she thought, Let me buy some fava beans and cook them. Maybe I can do one more thing I once thought I couldn’t… who knows?

“What’s for dinner, what did you cook today?” her husband asked. When she said “fava beans,” his face lit up. When she served everyone and took her own first bite, she realized that even though she didn’t love the taste, it wasn’t as bad as she remembered. Oh! It’s not that bad at all… a bit of lemon would make it even better, she thought, smiling.

She felt good, as if she had accomplished something very important. Human beings were strange creatures. She wondered what else she had said “I can’t do” to — what other things she had eliminated herself from. In what other areas had she convinced herself that she would experience something far worse than reality?

Today, she had stepped onto an entirely new path. Who knew a single bite of clotted cream could lead to so much…

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Yahya Hamurcu