In case you didn't know, Ramadan is a month when Muslims don't eat from dawn till sunset every day. In some countries, like mine, both public and private companies allow us to work less hours during Ramadan. Of course we make up for it during the rest of the year. But working less hours a day and not having breakfast or lunch makes Ramadan days feel much longer than the normal ones, not only because of hunger, thirst, headache and waiting for sunset, we do have more spare hours during Ramadan days.
The opposite applies to Ramadan nights, when we have a lot to do and not enough time.
I know they are not the same during the whole month, it's always hard at the beginning and then it gets easier, it has always been like this. At least for longer than I can remember.
During these long Ramadan days, I feel like I can do anything. Everything is easier than not eating and not drinking water, so if I can do the hard thing, I can do anything. I say "I can" because I'm not sure this is a general rule. Ramadan doesn't stop me from playing football or training. I can play Karate, I can run and I can do huge physical efforts without feeling tired, because whatever I might feel is nothing compared to thirst and hunger. I can concentrate at work without a lunch break and I don't feel bored or maybe I do but that feeling is not as obvious as hunger and thirst.
During Ramadan, if you're in a muslim society, you should be careful with people, especially during the first days. Most people are smokers or coffee addicts, so they are surely suffering terrible headache during the first days. provoking them, even unintentionally will probably have bad results as they are very emotional and they tend to overreact. So I'm trying to be careful even though I think they can still controle themselves. I see it as a bad tradition that we're not fighting hard enough because we think it's kind of funny.
As for me, I'm a non smoker and I have no coffee addiction, but I still felt this headache and shaking hands sometimes during this first day. I must have a habit that I'm not even aware of. But it doesn't matter now, it will go away anyway during Ramadhan along with anything else my body will ask for.
My relationship with my body during this holy month is like the relationship between a parent and his child except that I can be mean with my body. It keeps screaming begging or even crying to have what it wants and what it was used to having but I just say no with no explanation or promises or compromises. I decide what to give my body and when. And during Ramadan my body is not a priority at all. I'm replacing it with a new family member "my soul".
Muslims tend to strengthen their spiritual "dimension" on the expense of the physical one.
During the last year for example, my demons have outnumbered, outweighed and outfought my angels, if the latter ever existed (lol), but today I managed to get myself walking to the mosque to do the prayer there.
“Demons and angels” was a joke, but this is something serious: Going to the mosque for the first time in months felt very emotional. The mosque felt like an old friend I abandoned for a long while and then I met him again and he was waiting for me. He wasn't judging or something, but I hated myself for not doing the prayers there for so long and I also loved myself at the same time for doing it today.
If the mosque is my old friend, then Quran is our common interest. It's what brings us together. But Quran is also much more than that.
For me, hearing the Quran unleashes my mind and my soul for a journey of mind traveling or time traveling simultaneously to many different times and places.
Some verses are about earlier prophets who came thousands of years before the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or about things that happened after his time that the Quran predicted and history proved them right or some things that were not possible to know during his life and only centuries after his death (pbuh) science, geography physics or astronomy confirmed them.I travel to those times.
Gearing the same verses, I also travel to the time when he received the revelations, I mean the hard times when the quran was revealed to him (pbuh) when only a handful of people believed in him, a prophet who can't resurrect the dead or transform things or talk to animals, he had no other miracle than his message itself.
Hearing the Quran during the prayer, I also travel to the times when I was trying to memorise it. Hearing one of the familiar verses, I can remember myself reading it from the book, closing my eyes or closing the book, then repeating it several times from my memory until it's carved there, I can remember when, where and how many times I was trying to memorise that verse. I can remember who was next to me and what we did next. At the same time, I am getting that verse back to my memory.
At this point I did 3.5% of Ramadan. Was it hard? YES. Am I going to stop here? NO.
I know I can finish this, I do it every year. I started doing it since I was too little. I don't know about these days' children, but 20 years ago, children were very curious about fasting Ramadhan. Imagine you are in a society were everyone is doing something everyday for a month wouldn't you want to try it? Especially when they tell you you are too young to do it?
Parents convince their children to only try it for half a day and then another half the next day, assuming that they can link the two halves together and it would be like fasting a day lol. Well my parents weren't very convincing about this or they weren't trying hard enough. So, maybe this will sound unusual, but I did 5 days out of 30 when I was only 5 years old. Only a few of my friends believe me when I tell them this. I was only 11 years old when I fasted the whole month for the first time in my life and I made sure to keep doing it even since.
That taught me alot about myself. Or maybe it made me myself. Consistency is, in my opinion, one of my strengths. Being tired after 10% of the targeted distance never stopped me from jogging, being bored at work or demotivated... all these feelings never seemed to stop me from doing something once I decide it's the right thing to do. Nobody taught me this but I also keep telling myself: "Start running, never stop, and you'll end up reaching the finish line". Or maybe Ramadan told me this in its way.
I'd like to share with you a thought that might lead to a deeper research, I would appreciate your thoughts and guidance about it. It's about the fact that memorising the Quran is much easier during Ramadhan than during the rest of the year. I've been trying to understand why is it so. the explanations I could think of are:
1- As I said earlier, Muslims are more in touch with their spiritual dimension during this month. We feel closer to our creator, so maybe that makes it easier for us to memorise his words.
2- Back to the fact that everything is easier during Ramadan because nothing could be harder that not eating or drinking all day. That constant feeling of thirst and hunger can be a motivation or something that force us out of comfort and that's where great things can be achieved. I read about an experience that says when students put their hands into some very cold water while reading a certain information, that information sticks in their minds forever.
To end this post, I would like to wish you all a blessed Ramadan and thank all my friends who messaged me about Ramadan privately or publicly. It really means a lot to me especially when it comes from non muslim friends. I don’t know if this is right, but it feels more meaningful when it comes from them.
Muslims greeting each other about Eids and Ramadhan feels more like a habit, but when it comes from someone who probably has no other muslim friends than me, it means that he thought about me and wished me a blessed month despite the fact that this month means nothing to him if it wasn’t for me. Just like I, sometimes, wish my special cristian friends a merry christmas.
Thank you for reading and have a blessed Ramadan again.
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