rama rama ding dong

Every year children and adults alike get extremely excited at the distant sound of Ramadan approaching. Two weeks prior to Ramadan, without fail, supermarkets start getting extremely crowded and practically every kitchen in every house is busy preparing an amount of sambosas that in reality can feed a small country over a year, not just a household over a month.

Now before you go off thinking that you know where this is headed and feeling all smart, let me make it clear that this post is not here to go on about the amount of food that is wasted or criticize the fact that people tend to overindulge (although both are valid points). I am here to share with you my personal belief of what most people go through.

During the first few days of the month people tend to have a strong sense of piety, humbleness and kind of feel like that they are on a different spiritual level. For some reason there is this strong smell of excitement over a month that is supposed to test our will and in reality make life difficult. We wake up early before work to pray, get ready, and come into to the office just on time (2 hours later than normal days, great! right? hmmm...). We try hard stay focused and tend to stay very level headed and if something bothers us with all simplicity we pray for patience and feel good about not losing our temper. By the time 4pm rolls around we get a little exhausted and go home driving patiently and trying to keep our cool with the traffic and occasional insane driver on the road. By the time Maghreb prayers rolls around we feel that sense of excitement and continue our patience in waiting for Iftar. What keeps us going at the begging is this sick idea  that its supposed to get easier as time goes by.

Now as I mentioned, that is just in the beginning. In reality (and I hope this doesn't come across as blasphemous) each day just gets more difficult and by the end of the month you just feel like you have an extremely bad hangover.

As the end of the month arrives many people can barely peel themselves out of bed at 10:30am to get to work (staying up till 4am doesn't help either). Everyone is pissed off at the world and spirituality has gone beyond zero and become negative because many peoples minds have become engulfed by extreme cynicism and selfishness (not that there is a lack of selfishness throughout the year). Making it to the office before 11:30 becomes practically impossible, in fact coming to the office at all tends to become useless when you have the productivity of a rock. I genuinely believe the body starts to partially decompose because our brain feels that we are too stupid to allow to survive and are basically nothing more than a waste of space. Practically everyone drives like a lunatic, uses every possible swear word they know despite fasting(sometimes in a wide range languages from various exotic countries). The going out in the last 15 minutes before maghreb prayers is basically suicide.

Sigh...

All that aside, I think it truly serves its purpose and makes us be grateful for what we have instead of complain about what we don't. Once in a while we need to stop looking up, and be grateful. The trick though is not to lose sight of the purpose of Ramadan and the importance of practicing self-control and hanging on to that spirituality throughout the month and not just for the first few days.

Wish you all a blessed Ramadan :-)