Restlessness

A significant facet of my identity is my faith. It fuels my actions, colors my character, and empowers me to seek the best in humankind. As a Muslim Coordinator at Chautauqua, my religious identity is often at the forefront. Muslims are so diverse in our beliefs and practices, and we have so much to learn from each other. What troubles me is when we try to define what it means to be a Muslim. I self-identify as one, but if I don't fit your definition, that's awkward. I personally like to avoid awkwardness, sometimes to a fault. For that reason, I don't like to include religious actions in my definition. It's a little problematic because beliefs should be followed by action, but I'll leave it to the believer to give good-intentioned significance to one set of actions over another when it comes to our religious practices. I strongly believe that Muslims are called to perform compassionate actions to our fellow human beings and to all of God's creation, and compassion is one of the cornerstones of the month of Ramadan. 

Ramadan has me restless. At the onset of the month, I told myself that I would watch my words and work at being more truthful with people. Most of the time, I’m brutally honest with myself but rarely share my innermost secrets with others. This leads to people thinking well of me when I’m not sure I deserve it. Compliments are great when they’re genuine and address an insecurity of mine, but they often undermine my regimen of humility. I wish I were better at being humble so that no praise or insult could affect my sense of self. I would prefer that sense of self be in a state of constant flux agitated by my understanding of God in an effort to be more human, but I digress.

I’m restless because of my failure to be truthful, to perform good actions with equally good intentions. I’ve also been untruthful because I’ve said on multiple occasions in the last several weeks that I love my tradition because of the sense of community I find in it. I said this because other Muslims voiced this experience, and I wanted to identify with it. I work to bring the Muslim community on my campus together, and I derive great pleasure from the happiness my work brings to others. However, of all the things I’m most grateful for, it’s not the sense of community I feel when I’m participating in ritual. Sometimes, like on Laylat-ul-Qadr, or the Night of Power on which the Prophet Muhammad first received revelation from God (which I hope to be observing at sunset later today), that sense of community motivates and pushes me to a higher spiritual plane. Most of the time, however, performing ritual in community is personally debilitating. It’s like finding $20 on the road and noticing that someone else saw you find the money, and when you turn it into the authorities, you don’t know how much that onlooker influenced your action. You hope you’d have turned the money in regardless, but you’ll never know. The good deed feels tainted. I wish I didn’t question the influence of my religious peers on my religious practice. God willing, I will one day trust that I act truthfully. In the meantime, I pray for strength and compassion.

Restlessness isn’t inherently a bad state to be in. I’m thankful for the weaknesses in myself that I’ve come to better understand, for I gain the ability to make progress. I’m thankful for the network of friends I can reach out to when I cripple myself with judgment, for in making myself vulnerable, others can heal wounds I’ve treated unfairly.  And I’m ever-so-thankful to acknowledge that I’m having a bad day, for the sun will rise on a new day within an hour, and I can better appreciate a good morning after having a not-so-good night.