Off Guard

14 Ramadhan, 1446

Exiting the gym, having concluded a pre-buka stint, for the briefest of moments I found myself imagining drinking at the water fountain downstairs, as I would have been about to do at any time outside the Fasting Month. The picture in my mind didn't last long enough, however, to create anything like a genuine sense of longing, and I was able to let it fade with no sense of regret at all. But the moment served as a reminder of what a creature of habit I am, and how the experience of the fast teaches one to be on guard against the taken-for-granted, the thoughtlessly habitual.

I was reminded of how destabilising such moments are in the first couple of days of fasting when they last long enough to create that horrible sense of expectation leading to a kind of crushing regret. Fasting gets easier for most of us, I think, simply because of learning to keep those moments of yearning under control, and learning that the monkey mind can be re-progammed (to horribly mix a metaphor.)

I also found myself mulling over another aspect of my experience of fasting that I've found puzzling over the years. On those occasions when I've been fasting for a single day (as in the day prior to Hari Raya Haji, which is not a compulsory fast) I've never really been troubled by those off guard moments. Perhaps this is because I'm more single-mindedly focused on the single day fasts, whilst beginning a long fast involves a somewhat more diffused consciousness stemming from the awareness that there will be time ahead to change a number of aspects of the self.

It's all about intentionality, and the development thereof - a simple yet profoundly important notion, enshrined in the Islamic insistence on establishing one's niat for the fast on each and every day.