Eid, a celebration of blessings
Ah! Eid is here! Eid Mubarak friends! What a beautiful morning the Eid day brings. The hustle and bustle in homes, as everyone gets up early and rushes to get ready for Eid prayers is so special and joyous, like no other morning in the year.
And why shouldn’t it be? We were blessed with the most blessed month of Ramazan and were able to undergo spiritual reawakening through fasting and avoiding all undesirable activities the whole month. I don’t know about you all, but I feel so light and fresh after each Ramazan passes, as if I am a new person all together, who has more self-control, patience and a general feeling of empathy and kindness towards others.
and kindness towards others.
Eid-ul-Fitr is a unique festival because it doesn’t celebrate any historical or worldly event. It is of a purely spiritual significance, a celebration of having completed a month of fasting and obeying Allah, and thanking Him for all the blessings of Ramazan. We are celebrating our own achievements and many also feel a pinch of sadness at bidding farewell to the holy month.
Ramazan also gave us the opportunity to spend some quality time with family and friends as we eat together at sehr and iftar, prayed together and did the Eid shopping together too!
How many such happy times are we able to share with our loved ones the rest of the year? Not as many, for everyone’s busy and varied schedules hardly gives us the chance to eat a meal with all family members, without someone dropping in late or rushing off to tend to something. Even if we are all sitting together enjoying a meal, often someone’s phone or another gadget keeps their attention and eyes diverted to irrelevant messages or posts, and not on having a meaningful conversation with others on the table.
But now that the beautiful and blessed days of Ramazan are over, we don’t have to let ourselves become deprived of the all the good things we experienced and did during the month. In fact, the essence of Ramazan, of fasting and submitting ourselves to the will and commands of Almighty Allah, is for us to continue doing so the rest of the year. Now I don’t mean here that we should go on fasting the whole year, but we can keep in mind the hunger and thirst we felt when we voluntarily gave up food and drink, to make sure that those who are poor don’t get deprived of this basic need.
We also tend to become more lenient and compassionate with those who work for us, such as maids and drivers, when they fast, and we try not to burden them with too much work. This consideration should continue the rest of the year and, trust me, they will appreciate our kindness and we will find their behaviour more respectful and dutiful.
The lessons of patience we have learnt by not giving in to our impulses when fasting, we can use the same willpower to stop ourselves now from getting angry, being dishonest, being rude, overindulgence in anything and generally following all the rules that Allah and our family has set for us. This won’t be so hard if we tap into our willpower that we so recently used with such success. It is all in our mind, if we programme it to only do good and stay positive for one month, it will remain so. Why don’t we tell ourselves that we will be that way the rest of the year too?
The pattern of kindness and good deeds that we followed during Ramazan should not change, it should continue so that we become better human beings and the world a better place for everyone to live in compassion and peace.