After having my second child, I realized that my emotional competence had limits. As he grew older, I began understanding that every child requires a different parent. Having two children meant that I needed to have two versions of myself. Not only were they two unique individuals, the gender difference further broadened the range of emotions I could and should display.

This realization about parenting became a lens through which I began to see all my relationships—each person in my life required me to show up differently, to adapt, to read the room. This in-depth understanding of how to behave differently in an assortment of environments or around diverse personalities is not something that everyone learns. I have learned this the hard way. I have also learned that this kind of perception requires profound self-awareness.

Being self-aware does not necessarily mean that your emotional regulation is foolproof. We are all human and we all fall here and there. But being self-aware teaches you what works for you. It convinces you to consciously be on the lookout for clues to learn what works for others too. Eventually it teaches you how to correlate your personality with that of others. You know who will always remain only an acquaintance, who will become a friend and who will always remain in your life.

Oftentimes, the ability to introspect this deeply comes from stressful situations in the past–situations in which you had no choice but to learn who you truly were, what steps you took in that time of difficulty, whether they need to be modified, and how you would have dealt with it differently in the future. This leads to a sense of hyper vigilance. You become accustomed to reaching into the future, predicting permutations of your own and others’ actions, and working well in advance to prepare for possible miscalculations.

Combined together, the self-awareness and hyper-vigilance equip one to refrain from become the miscalculator. You end up being the one that predicts and rectifies people’s errors even before they have thought of them. Yet this vigilance comes at a cost. On rare occasions, the mis slip will be on your part, which others find hard to believe and you cant stop blaming yourself for and spiral into extreme regret followed by guilt. It is easy to feel the pain of having let others down and in some ways yourself. But it is not easy to realize that you yourself are only human and are allowed to make simple mistakes just like everyone else. No one, but yourself, put the burden of others’ decisions on your shoulders. It is not easy to let go. This is where I find myself returning to the last verse in Surah Baqarah for perspective and comfort.

…لا يُكَلِّفُ اللهُ نَفْساً إِلّا وُسْعَها
Allah does not lay a responsibility on anyone beyond his capacity…

In his tafsir, Abul A’la Maududi explains it as such:
Man’s answerability to God is limited by the extent of his ability. If a man does not have the ability to do a certain thing, God will not take him to task for not having performed it. In the same way, if it is really beyond a man’s ability to abstain from something, God will not blame him for having failed to abstain from it. It should be noted here that man will not be the final judge as to whether he had the ability to do something or not. Such judgement will be made by God alone.
https://quran.com/2?translations=131%2C84%2C95

So maybe the burdens we place on ourselves were never ours to begin with. But then why does it feel like our mini-world will collapse if we step back? Why do we cling to this vigilance even when we know full well that it is Al-Qadeer, The All-Powerful and The All-Capable, who is truly running the show?

Perhaps we are all in need of constant reminders to Shakespeare’s famous line “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”. Perhaps we need to step up our dhikr so we are continually in the process of relying on the One who is in-charge. Our beloved prophet PBUH has been consoled in the Quran and told that his job was simply to deliver the message. It is up to Allah, Al-Aleem, the one with complete knowledge of the past, present, and future, to decide whom He chooses guidance for.

What I am slowly learning is that being kind to oneself is also an act of worship. The prophet himself (PBUH) felt deep sadness at the thought of people remaining in disbelief, continuing in their ignorance. He cared immensely. He felt responsible. If even he experienced this weight, perhaps it is not just acceptable but inevitable that we sometimes feel responsible for other people’s struggles and mistakes. This heaviness is part of being human, part of caring deeply.

But it is also from the prophet’s example that we learn where to draw the line. He was reminded, again and again, that his job was simply to convey the message—not to carry the outcomes. Our physical and emotional limitations are not failures; they are built-in permissions to step back. They are reminders that we were never meant to carry baggage that doesn’t belong to us. Perhaps the most faithful thing we can do is to occasionally set it down.