I loved this post I saw on Insta the other day. It said, “Biryani is literally rice that went through heat, pressure, and a little chaos and came out more valuable and desired. You got this, you’re just marinating. Soon, you’ll be biryani.”
I laughed when I read it, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Think about it.
Rice on its own is fine. It does its job. You cook it, put it on a plate, and eat it with something else. Nobody gets particularly excited about plain rice.
But give that same rice some spices, a few layers of flavour, a little patience, and enough time in a sealed pot, and suddenly people are willing to stand in long queues for it.
Somewhere between the heat and the waiting, something wonderful happens.
And I think life works a little like that.
We all have seasons when things feel unnecessarily complicated. Work gets demanding. Plans fall apart. People disappoint us. Money becomes a concern. Something we were looking forward to takes longer than expected. And just when we think we’ve figured things out, life decides to add another ingredient.
Sometimes you wonder what on earth is cooking.
You look around and see people who seem to have everything sorted. Someone has landed a better job. Someone has bought a house. Someone is travelling somewhere beautiful. Someone is celebrating a milestone you’ve been working towards for years.
Meanwhile, you’re trying to get through a Tuesday without losing your mind.
It’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind when everyone else’s life looks ready to be served and yours is still sitting on the stove.
But here’s something worth remembering. Good biryani takes time.
You cannot rush the process by turning up the heat and hoping for the best. Anyone who has tried cooking it knows what happens when you get impatient. The bottom burns, the rice becomes mushy, and all those lovely ingredients end up fighting with each other.
Some things need time to come together.
And that can be frustrating when you’re the one waiting.
We live in a world that has made waiting feel like failure. We expect quick replies, fast deliveries, instant results, and visible progress. Even our personal growth has somehow become another thing we’re supposed to achieve on a deadline.
Learn a new skill in thirty days. Change your life in ninety. Become the best version of yourself before the year ends.
It’s exhausting.
Sometimes you’re learning something that makes you feel like a complete beginner again. Maybe you’ve moved to a new city, started a different job, or taken a chance on something that once seemed beyond your reach.
You used to know exactly what you were doing. People came to you for answers. Now you’re asking questions, making mistakes, and quietly wondering whether you’ve made the right decision.
That feeling can be uncomfortable, especially when you’re used to being good at what you do.
But being uncomfortable can be part of learning.
Think about the first time you drove a car. You probably had to consciously remember the mirrors, the gears, the pedals, and everything happening around you. What feels effortless today once demanded every bit of your attention.
The awkwardness was part of getting better.
Of course, the biryani comparison has its limits. Life isn’t a recipe where every difficult experience guarantees a wonderful outcome. Some situations are genuinely unfair. Some people go through things they never deserved. And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is take the pot off the stove before everything burns.
You can learn from a difficult experience while still wishing it had never happened.
There’s no need to romanticise every struggle.
Still, I like the idea of marinating because it gives us permission to be unfinished.
We spend so much time trying to present ourselves as people who have everything figured out. We want to sound confident in meetings, have sensible answers when relatives ask about our plans, and reassure everyone that things are going well.
Even when we’re confused.
Even when we’re tired.
Even when we’re making decisions with half the information we wish we had.
Perhaps we could be a little kinder to ourselves during those moments.
You can be capable and still need help. You can be experienced and still find yourself completely lost in a new situation. You can have made good decisions in the past and still make a spectacularly bad one tomorrow.
That’s being human.
And while we’re talking about biryani, there’s another detail I love.
The ingredients don’t all bring the same thing to the pot.
The rice has its place. The spices bring their character. The onions need to brown. The meat or vegetables need their own preparation. Even the smallest ingredients contribute something to the final flavour.
Our lives are shaped in much the same way.
A conversation with someone who believed in you. A mistake you still remember. A manager who gave you an opportunity before you felt ready. A friendship that survived a difficult year. A rejection that pushed you towards a different path.
You carry pieces of these experiences with you.
Some become lessons you use years later. Others change the way you treat people.
Maybe you become more patient with a colleague who’s struggling because you remember how intimidating your first few weeks felt. Maybe you learn to listen more carefully because you know what it’s like to have someone dismiss your concerns. Maybe you finally understand why someone once told you to slow down.
And sometimes, the best part of the process is discovering something about yourself that you hadn’t noticed before.
That you can start again at forty.
That you can ask for help without feeling embarrassed.
That you can walk away from something you’ve spent years building and still find reasons to be excited about tomorrow.
There’s a lovely kind of freedom in accepting that your life is still being prepared.
You get to experiment. You get to change your mind. You get to discover that something you once desperately wanted doesn’t appeal to you anymore.
You might even realise that the recipe you’ve been following was written by someone else.
Perhaps the career you thought you needed isn’t the one that makes you happy. Perhaps the lifestyle you’ve been chasing leaves you with very little time for the people you love.
And perhaps success looks different now from what it did ten years ago.
That deserves some thought.
So the next time life feels like a pressure cooker, give yourself a little room to figure things out.
Take the evening off when you’re exhausted. Call the friend you’ve been meaning to speak to. Celebrate the small thing you managed to do today, even if nobody else noticed.
And if someone asks why you haven’t reached the next big milestone yet, you can always borrow this wonderfully ridiculous explanation.
“I’m still marinating.”
Preferably while eating a plate of biryani.
With raita on the side.
And someone nearby who knows better than to ask for a bite!
