I've been really struggling with my relationship with God for a while now. And not in the sense people are when they say that, like they don't believe in God or find the very basics contradicting and collapsing on itself. More like, I am trying to understand what place God and worship and my belief system occupies in my life. Where do I place it in the hierarchy of things that are a part of my life on a regular basis? I am not someone who feels comfortable with the idea of punching in the 5 times daily prayer on auto-pilot and just calling it. Religion and love, if one really believes in their existence, must, in essence, run on a higher cognitive setting than that of a habit. So I think there is the bare minimum which can mean nothing more than simply inculcating discipline in people to show up for things when they're required to, regardless of whether someone's feeling it or not. While its importance is beyond indispensable to human beings; to internalize it, to truly call myself a believer or a Muslim, I need to have more presence of mind and be more intentional with it. I'm intentional a lot in life. I blow things out of proportion; I plan my first time with everything. I also plan my seconds. I plan everyday habits. I don't have a psychological condition that makes me do that, it's just the way I'm wired that my most miserable days are when I don't have a schedule laid out for myself. I guess it's all more heightened right now given the fact that the entire world is under lockdown in Ramadan and we no longer have a pre-made schedule imposed on us. Everybody's somehow more active this Ramadan despite how there's fewer social worship options available now. Everyone's suddenly more aware of how society's predesignated idea of what it means to be "productive" is out of the court.
It's freeing but it's also paralyzing. Everyone's in either fight or flight mode. Which given the fact that we have never encountered a pandemic, is pretty normal on the chemical level. But it is the season of busting the myth of what it means to have potential. Of truly evaluating whether the distance between who we are and who we want to be is reliant on factors other than our own choices and core drive. We are face to face with the knowledge of how humans will always take the path of least resistance and how that is rarely circumstantial. It's how things stay easy, on schedule/routine/as per habit and we; unremarkable. We have trouble accepting that. And I wonder how long it will be through the pandemic until people start to surrender to their true design. Or emerge from this having altered it forever. Today, I made 2 Mother's Day cakes in advance for tomorrow. One of them was for my friend's mom on their behalf because they struggle with expressing themselves like that at times. I also made Chicken Tikka and Naan for Iftaar. I missed 4/4 of my online zoom lectures[so like all of them but I clearly wanted to state how many chances I had to fix that numerator] though I woke up earlier than normal. I guess it's a force of habit since I missed most of my lectures even when I was required to attend them in person. My friend dropped by a dessert for me when her father drove her across the city to come meet me and another friend. I wasn't at home though and I missed her because I was out interviewing someone for an article deadline that's closing in on me real soon. It was a nice day with a lot of physical exertion as compared to the many that preceded it. This has got me thinking that perhaps we are more the question, expectation & the dilemma we create for ourselves rather than the physical life we live. The connections between what goes on up there and how we transform it into action already exist.
We only possess the power to reinforce certain pathways. We all have performed habits because it's essentially how we stay alive and mine is questioning all of mine so I've really won the lotto there. Those are the neurons I'm adding more myelin too while there might be other people out there who are working on strengthing the neural pathways that take their prayer from an automated process to a transcendental one just by repetition and submission.
By Amna Rizvi,
Karachi, Pakistan.