Ramadan 2020: 2nd 10 days
May 4, 2020 - May 13, 2020
The middle 10 days of Ramadan might feel the longest. You have the routine down. Your body is completely used to fasting. And the days are getting longer.
This year is different because I’m used to seeing family and friends during Ramadan, but the shutdown has changed all that. I realized that Ramadan is more than just fasting. It’s a practice of humility.
Especially during the shutdown, you realize how easily you can lose everything. It’s meant to give you perspective of those who have less than you.
The lack of food and water. The constant exhaustion and inability to focus properly at times. It’s not to the same extent as what some go through, but it gives you pause.
It gives me pause because I am one event from destitute, one job loss from penniless, one step from the bottom.
It’s closer than most people realize until this pandemic happened.
The pandemic demonstrated to everyone how easy we can lose everything familiar.
If you don’t keep regular contact with people, you have a difficult time keeping contact with people. And you may not know if that person is sick or worse, dead.
It’s humility when you realize that you are entitled to nothing. It’s humility when you accept that the person you see the most often and the person you see on tv and the person you see in your neighborhood may not be there tomorrow. It’s humility that nearly everything you’ve done is due events aligning perfectly for you to
succeed.
Anything and everything can and will be taken away from us. Food, water, our safety. If anything, the pandemic has systematically shown us where our society is weak and unequal. Our way of life has been easily uprooted.
But there is no reason for despair.
There is always hope.
And that’s what the last 10 days of Ramadan teaches us.