Ramadan Kareem! I've been busy getting ready to go back to school again, but now it's Ramadan, a time for reflection, so I'm back. A lot of people ask me to explain the point of Ramadan. I just looked up the interpretation of a dream I had while oversleeping this morning and I think it about sums up what Ramadan means:
Me: Why am I dreaming of potato chips?
Internet: "To see or eat potato chips in your dream symbolizes your overindulgent behavior."
Me: And waking up convinced I'm thirsty when it's Ramadan and I can't drink water?
Internet: "To dream that you are thirsty symbolizes an unmet need. There is an emotional void in your life. Or you may be seeking inspiration, motivation or just an extra push."
That dream was probably also a reflection of this train of thought I had last night at the iftar party: "Ahhh this biryani is soooo good! I want to eat more! Am I still hungry? No, I'm not hungry but it isssss Ramadan and it's okay if I overeat because I won't be able to eat all day tomorrow or the next day or the next day...."
A lot of people use food to fill emotional needs. A desire to over-indulge in food is probably a sign of or even just direct emotional over-indulgence, making up for something you lack or comforting something that hurts superfluously rather than working to make yourself stronger or heal yourself. Because issues with food often indicate issues with control, the desire to indulge and comfort yourself probably comes out of feeling like you don't have enough control to make the necessary changes in your life. Sometimes people overindulge because they are out of touch with themselves and don't know their actual need. A lot of over-eating is caused by dehydration: by your body telling you it needs water, you being so out of touch with yourself that you don't realize you're thirsty and mistake it for a craving you can't satisfy when a glass of water would've done the trick.
It's not bad to indulge once in awhile but doing it for the wrong reasons will makes things worse. It becomes an emotional crutch. It's not a class A addiction, necessarily, but you may be headed in that direction. Some people may also it to another level, upon realizing their eating habits are control related, by trying to take back that control by starving themselves or making themselves throw up.
I appreciate having a month dedicated to emotional discipline scheduled yearly into my life. To gain power over even yourself, you have to become attuned with
yourself, to know and trust yourself enough to peacefully submit to your
needs rather than drown them out with a power trip of indulgence. Fasting helps you clear your head of the quick fix, instant gratification approach to life that's so easy to fall into and challenges you to address your deeper needs. It is a call to improve yourself, to change something in your life for the better.
If you fall back into your old ways at the end of Ramadan, just that you completed one fast means you challenged your amount of self-control, won, and came away that much stronger. After a month, you'll hopefully come away with realizations about yourself you can focus on and improve upon or you really like the way one change you made during Ramadan worked in your life and that's definitely enough to call it a success.
If you're a non-Muslim friend or you aren't much interested in Islam, religion, psychology or philosophy, what I've said so far is the basic explanation I have for the month of fasting. If you're interested in a more in-depth explanation, please continue reading.
A lot of people say that the discomfort of being hungry, the pain of absence reminds them to be God conscious. That works for some people, with the explanation that in trying times, you should turn to God because God is the source of all strength and all power. I don't think this is wrong but I am wary of associating God only with pain. Besides, in that line of thinking, it would make sense to deprive yourself an unhealthy amount, believing this would make you even more God conscious. But being unhealthy is forbidden by God because it is too great a challenge for the faith of any believer but the practiced, highly disciplined ascetic/Sufi.
The way I see it, not eating during the hours of light, the hours of awakeness/awareness, is a call to figure out your real needs. You relinquish your option to cloud your sense of fulfillment with physical satisfaction. Doing this for a religious reason, you relinquish that choice/freedom/control to God. Well, you remind yourself that you were given that option by God in the first place by giving it up. By giving it up, you check yourself and make sure you aren't abusing this simple power, because an abuse of power is the classical sign of a failing struggle for more power. By giving it up, paradoxically, you gain control because you gain God's favor and God's favor is expressed with an endowment of power. It may not be the power you want, necessarily. But you have learned to trust, because when you give up your control to someone, it's an act of trust, and you'll have to trust that the power you are given is, if not what you want, what you need.
Fasting is also a lesson in the nature of power, that you must first give it up and gain trust, which is demonstrated through nearly every facet of the Prophet Muhammad's life, whose trademark (or trade name...in his time merchants gained reputation through the names they were given in their trade) was Al-Amin, the trustworthy.
What I'm saying is, if you're like me and you're dreaming of potato chips at the beginning of Ramadan and waking up in a panic thinking you're thirsty, this might be a sign of the path that can take you far in right direction, because you have a long way to go. Let the adventure begin!
Showing posts with label honesty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label honesty. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
My New Year's Resolutions
I don't normally make New Year's Resolutions because they are such flimsy creatures. However, this is a pivotal stage of my life and I don't see how using the turning of the calender as another excuse to think through my decisions could hurt. I know you're thinking I've already wasted a whole day of this year or that I'm lazy, and though you'd be right on both accounts, you should also know I'm leaning on some old revisionist tendencies of mine today so bear with me.
To improve the custom of New Year's resolution making, I propose that after the first day of the New Year has passed and you've had time to rethink your resolutions, there should be a tradition to be honest with yourself about your ambitions. Why are you trying to lose ten pounds? Do you really need to reconnect with you flaky friends? Why should stop cracking your knuckles? If you don't have a good answer today, that resolution isn't gonna stick.
I work with wonderful people at the library. I like almost all of my co-workers who I've gotten to know, which is generally how it goes with me and people. However, I have a lot of trouble conveying that I like them solely due to the fact that I am a pretty awkward conversationalist these days. I'm okay with small talk but after the acceptable number of exchanges, people tend to think you're talking to them about the weather because you're just making conversation to be polite and don't really like them all that much or even find their existence interesting. But I love talking about the weather! What other people say about the weather tells me a million things about them! And I love learning things about people!**
Naturally, I would like to resolve to become witty and eloquent. I've been so before. But I think I have now achieved the social awkwardness I worked tirelessly to avoid since like, second grade. It takes a lot of effort to be socially competent and I am really lazy and have found better things to invest my energy in.
Ah, but there's another twist! One of the things, if not The Thing that I've chosen to invest my energy in is the building of good communities. Co-workers, ideally, form a community around their shared workplace and common work experiences. When they don't, they create an uncomfortable environment for everyone involved. This is the reason that there are so many pop-management books.
So, how do you create community even though you are socially awkward because when you said you didn't have cable, your co-worker thought TV was against your religion and not because you don't have that kinda cash? Well, for now I figure if I stick around long enough, they'll eventually get it. Keep your enemies close and you'll probably stop calling them enemies. Except, of course, in jest.
So, my revised resolution is to refuse to allow my awkwardness to dissuade me from communicating with my co-workers. Or people in general. Because sometimes the awkwardness is their fault and there's no reason I should have to do the work of smoothing things over. I don't have to make them feel okay about their preconceived notions of Muslim Americans or Muslim American women. But it wouldn't be fair of me to not provide them with opportunities to learn/do better. And to be fair, I also resolve to be more sensitive to realizing when the awkwardness is actually my fault and then, and ONLY then, breaking out some wit and/or eloquence.
**Disclaimer: I really don't like gossip, though. I don't stop people from telling me gossip but I will try my best not to repeat it and usually resent the gossiper for now creating the possibility of the awkward situation in which I have to make my knowledge of their gossip known. I should try to use gossip I hear for good from now on. Is that another resolution? Let's save that one for another time.
To improve the custom of New Year's resolution making, I propose that after the first day of the New Year has passed and you've had time to rethink your resolutions, there should be a tradition to be honest with yourself about your ambitions. Why are you trying to lose ten pounds? Do you really need to reconnect with you flaky friends? Why should stop cracking your knuckles? If you don't have a good answer today, that resolution isn't gonna stick.
I work with wonderful people at the library. I like almost all of my co-workers who I've gotten to know, which is generally how it goes with me and people. However, I have a lot of trouble conveying that I like them solely due to the fact that I am a pretty awkward conversationalist these days. I'm okay with small talk but after the acceptable number of exchanges, people tend to think you're talking to them about the weather because you're just making conversation to be polite and don't really like them all that much or even find their existence interesting. But I love talking about the weather! What other people say about the weather tells me a million things about them! And I love learning things about people!**
Naturally, I would like to resolve to become witty and eloquent. I've been so before. But I think I have now achieved the social awkwardness I worked tirelessly to avoid since like, second grade. It takes a lot of effort to be socially competent and I am really lazy and have found better things to invest my energy in.
Ah, but there's another twist! One of the things, if not The Thing that I've chosen to invest my energy in is the building of good communities. Co-workers, ideally, form a community around their shared workplace and common work experiences. When they don't, they create an uncomfortable environment for everyone involved. This is the reason that there are so many pop-management books.
So, how do you create community even though you are socially awkward because when you said you didn't have cable, your co-worker thought TV was against your religion and not because you don't have that kinda cash? Well, for now I figure if I stick around long enough, they'll eventually get it. Keep your enemies close and you'll probably stop calling them enemies. Except, of course, in jest.
So, my revised resolution is to refuse to allow my awkwardness to dissuade me from communicating with my co-workers. Or people in general. Because sometimes the awkwardness is their fault and there's no reason I should have to do the work of smoothing things over. I don't have to make them feel okay about their preconceived notions of Muslim Americans or Muslim American women. But it wouldn't be fair of me to not provide them with opportunities to learn/do better. And to be fair, I also resolve to be more sensitive to realizing when the awkwardness is actually my fault and then, and ONLY then, breaking out some wit and/or eloquence.
**Disclaimer: I really don't like gossip, though. I don't stop people from telling me gossip but I will try my best not to repeat it and usually resent the gossiper for now creating the possibility of the awkward situation in which I have to make my knowledge of their gossip known. I should try to use gossip I hear for good from now on. Is that another resolution? Let's save that one for another time.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Gut Feelings
I just read an article about learning to be more intuitive. At first it seems counter-intuitive that you can learn intuition. I think this is because intuition has a connotation of being something that is ingrained. Something you either have or you don't have. Learning how to be intuitive rings of learning how to be smart. You either are smart or you aren't, right?
I vehemently disagree on both accounts. More later on the smarts.
Of course you can learn to be more intuitive. By the time people are teenagers, I believe they have had enough experiences in their lives that they can, by intuition, know a lot about most people and situations. The article I read suggests that, in order to be intuitive, you have "be in touch with yourself." It suggests meditation to achieve the inward stretch. Though I enjoy a good amount of yoga and love solitary, meditative activities, I believe there's more to intuition than occasionally slowing down to think.
Being intuitive, first of all, requires a lot of honesty. You cannot be intuitive by lying to yourself. In fact, a lot of times you can distinguish an intuition by asking yourself whether or not the feeling you are having feels like it's coming out of being honest with yourself. After all, if you are not honest with yourself, how do you know if you can trust yourself?
If you're going to be honest with yourself, sometimes you have to confront yourself. A lot of times, in the heat of passion, people feel or say things that they don't mean. After such a burst of anger, sadness, frustration or anxiety, they spend a lot of time convincing themselves that what they said of felt was the truth. Rather than listening to their intuitive side, which continuously posits that they were wrong, they find themselves continuously defensive against themselves.
There are ways that intuition can become muddled which make it difficult to decide if you can trust yourself. I think that being betrayed by someone you love results in a mistrust of yourself deep enough that finding your way back to inner focus can take a lot of healing time and patience. It doesn't hurt to find healing love, either. Just remember, if you try, you can trust yourself again.
Intuition is a powerful skill. It is not the kind of skill that has ever been taught in classrooms, and is probably one reason I eventually hated school. It is powerful enough that it must be used responsibly. It is inadvisable to challenge the limits of your intuition by continuously placing yourself in intuitively challenging situations, especially when your own emotions are involved. I say this from experience. But on this front, Susan King found a healthy outlet for her intuitive powers and I intend to find my own.
I vehemently disagree on both accounts. More later on the smarts.
Of course you can learn to be more intuitive. By the time people are teenagers, I believe they have had enough experiences in their lives that they can, by intuition, know a lot about most people and situations. The article I read suggests that, in order to be intuitive, you have "be in touch with yourself." It suggests meditation to achieve the inward stretch. Though I enjoy a good amount of yoga and love solitary, meditative activities, I believe there's more to intuition than occasionally slowing down to think.
Being intuitive, first of all, requires a lot of honesty. You cannot be intuitive by lying to yourself. In fact, a lot of times you can distinguish an intuition by asking yourself whether or not the feeling you are having feels like it's coming out of being honest with yourself. After all, if you are not honest with yourself, how do you know if you can trust yourself?
If you're going to be honest with yourself, sometimes you have to confront yourself. A lot of times, in the heat of passion, people feel or say things that they don't mean. After such a burst of anger, sadness, frustration or anxiety, they spend a lot of time convincing themselves that what they said of felt was the truth. Rather than listening to their intuitive side, which continuously posits that they were wrong, they find themselves continuously defensive against themselves.
There are ways that intuition can become muddled which make it difficult to decide if you can trust yourself. I think that being betrayed by someone you love results in a mistrust of yourself deep enough that finding your way back to inner focus can take a lot of healing time and patience. It doesn't hurt to find healing love, either. Just remember, if you try, you can trust yourself again.
Intuition is a powerful skill. It is not the kind of skill that has ever been taught in classrooms, and is probably one reason I eventually hated school. It is powerful enough that it must be used responsibly. It is inadvisable to challenge the limits of your intuition by continuously placing yourself in intuitively challenging situations, especially when your own emotions are involved. I say this from experience. But on this front, Susan King found a healthy outlet for her intuitive powers and I intend to find my own.
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