Transforming into something new

This is one of my favorite poems by Rumi, it is a story about chickpea.

The Chickpea (Mathnawi  III, 4159-4211)

translated by Reynold A Nicholson

Look at a chickpea in the pot, how it leaps up when it is subjected to the fire. At the time of its being boiled, the chickpea comes up continually to the top of the pot and raises a hundred cries, Saying, "Why are you setting the fire on me? Since you bought (and approved) me, how are you turning me upside down?"

The housewife goes on hitting it with the ladle. "No!" says she: "boil nicely and don't jump away from one who makes the fire. I do not boil you because you are hateful to me: nay, 'tis that you may get taste and savour, So that you may become nutriment and mingle with the (vital) spirit: this affliction of yours is not on account of (your) being despised. You, when green and fresh, were drinking water in the garden: that water-drinking was for the sake of this fire."

His (God's) mercy is prior to His wrath, to the end that by (God's) mercy he (the afflicted person) may suffer affliction. His (God's) mercy (eternally) preceded His wrath in order that the stock-in-trade, (which is) existence, should come to hand (be acquired)......

This poem is about some vegetables that are being cooked by a housewife. The vegetables complaint to the housewife why they have to be cooked in such hot condition, so they feel pain for it. The housewife tells them that after they grow and get all God kindness, the sun that always shine to them everyday and the rain that pour to them, they have to do a test for a moment. At the time they have been cooked well, they will have good taste, then man eat them. After the man eat them they will have a higher level of God’s creatures. Rumi, took the idea that Aristotle and Gallen developed long time before his era, that food is cooked then filtered in human body and it will change into human seed and finally become a human.
However, for me this poem is more than Aristotle and Gallen idea of food that then becoming human body.

For me this poem shows that if we want to be a better person we have to put our identity even we have to throw away our ego, so we will get a higher level in humanism. The chickpea, it has to put his identity as a chickpea, and throw away its ego. The food creature will change all of its body, although it feels pain. This metaphor is the same for us. If one has a trouble, a big trouble. For example, sometimes he has to put his identity to fix his trouble, and he feels pain for putting his identity, but he can be a better people after that. He loses his former identity forever, but he gets a new life. Just like the cooked chickpea, a man eats that and then it becomes a human being.