Ramadan: What is it, truly?
One month, is that all there is to it?
How we perceive the holly month of Ramadan will vary from one person to another, often reflecting the person’s moral, cultural and ethical stance. There are those who perceive Ramadan as a burden, those who eagerly wait for it to arrive and those who are neither for or against it and fulfill the requirements while it lasts.
There are a number of factors that add up to the month’s significance. The month is often portrayed and used as a source of spiritual healing, it urges you to empathize with those who are unfortunate, gives you the time to re-evaluate your behavior (on both, a physical and mental level) and above all, it can provide you with a sense of hope and determination that in return may strengthen your own faith.
How we perceive it isn’t our point of question, it is the gap that lies between our behavior and perception that is up for questioning.
For those with the strong will to pray, Ramadan could be a starting point. Praying for a month straight, 5 times a day may turn the occasional habit into a day-to-day habit. For those with a will to re-evaluate their behavior in terms of kindness, generosity, patience and understanding, Ramadan may also provide them with the atmospherically convenient context needed. For those with the will to minimize their sins and optimize their good-deeds, Ramadan provides them with a comforting atmosphere highlighting the aspect of forgiveness and well-being.
However, Ramadan’s ultimate purpose is not to pause time but to provide you with time. It is not a time-length to be used and dismissed but it is rather a start-point.
It is so very often that we fail to recognize the essence of the holy month that we consciously begin our count-down once we have begun. We conform to norms and traditions and behave as we have been taught to. For one whole month, all humans with a directed faith in Islam unite to share behavioral characteristics but the gap remains to exist, mentally. We agree to rejoice, spend our mornings peacefully until the sun sets. We then either begin to recognize our true selves and conform to our own selves until the sun begins to rise or we continue to behave peacefully throughout the whole month.
But what happens when it ends? Do we swiftly twirl back to our sinful lives or do we maintain the behavior we spent a month re-evaluating?
It is not merely a matter of meeting expectations, its a matter of having the will to change to the better, to strengthen our weakness and develop a newer, stronger and purified version of the self. It is not a matter of altering our behavior for a certain time-length, it is a matter of altering our behavior for the sake of our own well-being. Behave as you would on any given day for Ramadan is not merely a play to participate in.
