Who Am I And How Am I To Be

I was grateful to be invited by Omar Salha, Founder and CEO of the Ramadan Tent Project (RTP) https://www.ramadantentproject.com/, to talk on April 26 at their first online MyOpenIftar 2020 https://www.openiftar.co.uk/work/openiftar2020, on the topic of healthy habits during Ramadan. The following is a small summary of my talk.

Since this was my first live webinar, I was both excited and nervous, with many “umms” and “you knows” breaking through as I settled into what I wanted to say.  Nevertheless, I think we got there in the end.  RTP had asked for a talk on ‘How to Use Ramadan to Build Healthy Habits?’, which you will see I interpreted as seeking an answer to a deeper question: who am I, and how am I to be?  As such, what I speak about in the talk and write in the following overview is relevant to all of us, whatever our religious convictions.

What are our habits?

We think of ‘habit’ as merely meaning behaviour, yet the word ‘habit’ for a long time referred to how someone was clothed. The connection is easy to see: we clothe ourselves in our habits, and with time our habits define who we are. For instance, we are not born as parents, but we learn how to parent our children. We learn to care, nurture, bathe and feed our children. Who do we then become? We become good parents. We are also not born as addicts. Addiction is a learned behaviour. It starts with a drink or a drug, and with time and repetition, we become addicts. Our habits define who we are. When thinking about our habits, which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to change, then the appropriate question to ask ourselves is ‘who am I and how am I to be?’. 

What is Ramadan for?

Unfortunately, many of us engage with Ramadan as a duty, feeling compelled to do what is asked of us out of fear and reward. However, when we do things simply out of duty, whatever it may be, the action loses its weight and becomes worthless. We lose touch with its meaning, both for us and the wider world. We miss the opportunity to truly experience Ramadan and learn from its teachings.

Ramadan arrives every year, disrupting the routine busyness of our lives, giving us time for peace, quiet and self-reflection. It allows us the space to re-evaluate our lives and ask who we are and how are we being towards ourselves, with others and in our relationship with God?  For muslims, whose lives are always informed by teachings of the Quran, Ramadan is an opportunity to be re-taught aspects of Quranic life that have perhaps faded in their significance to us.  In particular, Ramadan emphasises the importance of experience as a gateway to deeper personal understanding and spiritual growth.

For instance, in Ramadan we fast to experience hunger, thirst, and to think of those in the world who have little or nothing to eat. Fasting re-teaches us to empathise with others. We feel devoted by increasing our devotion to our creator and feeling closer to Him, remembering that all we have, even if it is just warm water from the tap, is a blessing from Him. 

Ramadan re-teaches us gratitude: in the absence of food and water, we now notice how easy it is for us to get food the rest of the year, so we become grateful. In Ramadan we give charity in whatever form we may choose, so we may bring our attention to the needs of others and to give what we can in their aid.  In this way, Ramadan re-teaches us humility. 

We strengthen our relationship bonds by connecting with our friends and family, checking on our loved ones, and gathering people together. We become open to meeting new people, greeting strangers, and reaching out to neighbours. Ramadan encourages us to put aside our differences, disagreements, and grudges and to reconnect with old friends and colleagues. Therefore, Ramadan re-teaches us the importance and power of openness, forgiveness and mercy.

The Will to Change

Many habits that eventually become harmful do not start out that way.  For instance, perhaps there was a time that we didn’t feel safe and genuinely needed to be on guard to protect ourselves, but over time this led to a habit of anxiously seeing danger everywhere even when we were no longer threatened.  Addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling and so on typically start out from a need to feel better and eke a sense of joy out of a miserable world.

These once-beneficial habits later impact our lives negatively and we start to struggle. Perhaps we are ashamed of what it is we are struggling with. We live in a culture that condemns certain behaviours, so to speak to someone might seem threatening as we expect judgement.  As a result, most of us do not reach out.  With time, we feel powerless and unable to change our ways and become stuck in our situatedness. 

Mental illness is often perceived as a weakness or a failing. Yet in truth, to suffer is part of being human: it is how we attend to and engage with our suffering that makes the difference.  Suffering is always meaningful, and deciphering this meaning is part of how we move beyond it to a greater sense of fulfilment.  Often we cannot do this on our own - being human means being with others, as being social is an inherent part of who we are.  

It is in our nature to need connection with others, especially when we are struggling. We might want to speak to a relative or a friend. Speaking to a stranger who is outside of the family and friends circle may even feel safer. Some of us seek counselling because we desperately need to be understood and where we can talk about the most difficult aspects of ourselves and our lives in a secure place and with a trusted therapist. 

God has expression through our doings, through who we are and how we are in the world and with our family and friends and with our communities. Ramadan offers us the chance to look at how we are living. We might think of ourselves and our learned habits as good vs bad, healthy vs unhealthy and strong vs weak. However, it is more than that. We must face who we are with courage but most importantly with love, kindness and compassion, as God has shown us. We need to find the willingness within ourselves to change for any change to take place at all and this starts with the first step: making the choice. 

What are we waiting for?

Ramadan re-teaches us simply because we learn what we have already learnt from Islam itself, from the Quran, from the Prophet Mohammed sallah Allah w Alayhi w Sallam. Ramadan is one month out of the whole year, but we have all year to be empathetic, feel gratitude, have humility, be humble, think of others and connect with people, our loved ones and friends. Ramadan is a check-in. It checks-in with who we are and how we are being

Ramadan gives us a chance to reinvigorate our commitment to the way of life that we choose for ourselves. It helps us maintain our commitment in face of the distractions and difficulties of everyday life. 

When we ask ourselves who we want to be, we must also ask what we are willing to do to be that person. Asking such questions implies an intention.  We are intending to connect to what is in our hearts and in our souls despite it being painful or even fearful. We connect to the truth and we confront ourselves. What does this mean for us? It means that we are willing to dare question our own being and come to terms with who we truly are and how we are being with others and in the world. 

Psychotherapist and Counsellor Thoraya Alkasab