Qur'anic Reflections

Lessons from Ramadan

Assalamu alaikum!

I know the title sounds a little out of place for now, but I don't know, today being Ashura and with all the fasting and ibadah, it kinda reminds me of Ramadan. It is a dull sadness inside, to know that Ramadan doesn't stay forever and that the spirit and the steadfastnesss of Iman we have in Ramadan doesn't always tread along with us for the rest of the year.

Don't you miss the long Taraweeh salah? How the rest of the world takes a backseat and it's just you and your prayer mat and your prayer beads and your silent conversations with Allah?

How your worldly deadlines don't matter and all you care about is finishing your portion of Qur'an for that day?

It's a wonderful feeling to be so at peace with your own self and after a long time, I feel that peace today and that made me realize that even if Ramadan can't stay with us forever, its Lessons can.

So I present to you here, a few things that stayed with me from this Ramadan's experience.

For me, the major lesson was the realization of what sticking to a routine does.

I'm the kind of person who finds solace in planning my day well ahead and that works out wonders for me because I am not someone who can function in chaos. So I plan my day out, at a work level and a spiritual level deciding what I want to do on that particular day.

It helps me function better and with each tick on my to do list, my confidence grows.

Now why I am rambling about this to you guys?

Because I feel like our Nafs is easier to control when we discipline it into a routine. When we have no clue what we want to do in our free time, Shaytan takes up that empty space and fills it with all sorts of sinful ideas and thoughts.

There is a hadith that Allah SWT likes the consistency of actions, even if they're small. Planning out a timetable for your Qur'an, Tasbeeh and Salah will make sure you can cash in on all of the good deeds every day. It helps to download apps that make list-making easier (I personally use Google Keep and Evernote) or just your good old notepad will do.

It's like having a map of your day in your hand, the better it is, the lesser the chances are that you will get lost and the easier it becomes to reach your destination. Glancing at the to-do list multiple times during the day makes you process your actions, especially when you are an impulsive person (like Yours Truly)

It's ridiculous though, the way Shaytan can infiltrate everything! Because the downside of this came to me in the form of monotony and the sense of smugness that comes with accomplishing the list of things.

Sometimes when you get better at it, you become detached to it, because what used to come with difficulty before, is now an easy task for you so now you start doing things just for the heck of it, for that tick on your list and you feel accomplished and then do not want to go any further and then it becomes a cycle where you're just a machine working monotonously with no insight and perspective of what you're doing.

This then hits your Iman, and you start becoming hard hearted. You still wake up for Tahajjud as per your alarm clock but your eyes are dry, your meeting with Allah doesn't have that previous sheen anymore and your eyes don't hold that apologetic look because you feel like you're such a good person and that you've not been committing any sins ( Astagfirullah)

This happens to the best of us. What starts as a well-natured activity sometimes loses its meaning along the way.

So how do we get out of it?

The key is to get in touch with yourself. To know yourself so well that no amount of appreciation will take your feet off the ground. To know your dark past and your detestable mistakes and to remember them more often than your achievements.

There's been a time for all of us when even trying to read the Qur'an was difficult and then we took the first step and willed and forced ourselves to commit to it and in the beginning it felt so hard, our tongues would fumble and give up but we'd come back at it, again and again.

I want you to remember that person. I want you to remember that phase in your life when you chose to migrate from all the bad things you used to. And I want you to hold on to that person today.

Because there is no other way to break out from this cycle of smugness other than the humility of knowing that you will always be broken and incomplete without Allah, no matter the number of ticks in your to-do list.

To do this, we need to have a meaningful conversation with Allah. Cry out to Him, if you don't feel the tears coming, keep trying because they will. Trust me, I've tried.

Last Ramadan for me had started well but even till the end of the first ten days, my eyes were dry until one day they watered and then everything started making sense and all the days that followed after that, I felt a unique connection with Allah.

Haha, did I go offtrack?

The main thing I'm trying to say here is that if we want to control our Nafs, we need to filter out the chaos first. Make sure you know where you're going. What you want to achieve today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year, this entire lifetime! What makes you happy, what gets you closer to Allah. Find that goal and start planning!

And if along the way, the spark starts to lighten, know your roots and how you started. Count your failures, your sins in front of Allah and as you do that, you realize that maybe you're not such a hot shot but an average sinner who could only get so far because of Allah's Mercy.

Planning and Humility, these may sound the most unrelatable of values but that's what Ramadan taught me.

What did Ramadan teach you?! Let me know!

I hope this helped. JazakAllah Khair!