When was the last time you experienced genuine happiness? (For the sake of this conversation, let’s define happiness as the lack of a want. In other words, happiness is a state of contentment with our given share, and the absence of an underlying restlessness in the soul to acquire anything further.)
So, when was the last time you felt like this? If you are struggling to remember, try to think of your last major achievement. Something that you pursued relentlessly for months, perhaps years, believing that its acquisition would bring you some degree of contentment. Then ask yourself how long it was, once the novelty of the achievement wore off, before you moved onto the next pursuit; the next qualification; the next promotion or the next car.
This is the essence of modern living. The endless pursuit of worldly goals buttressed by a perpetual cycle of doubts and anxiety which we embrace under the delusion that the world will not always remain so cruel. That eventually, when we have paid our dues and have that career we want to have, or married that person we want to marry, or own that house we want to own, we will find our island of peace. One might say that we have created for ourselves a shrine of the unattainable, and spend our lives worshipping at its altar. (A cynic might argue that this is the nature of human endeavour. That motivation for its sake has to thrive in something elusive so as to keep the human mind engaged. But that is to paint a dull and disingenuous picture of the human condition for the cause of upholding the modern status-quo and abdicating reflection. It is a form of sophistry.)
My belief is not that the shrine (of happiness) is unattainable, but that attaining it would require a deliberate and fundamental reconfiguration of perspective, the conduit to which is the holy month. Mawlana Rumi tells the story of a woman who is holding a baby which won’t stop crying. The woman is perplexed. She tries to give it some sweets, but it continues to cry. She tries to give the baby some kebab but the baby is not interested in the kebab. She tries a nice sweet cup of Turkish coffee but the baby is still crying and her life seems to be in turmoil as she is unable to figure it out. And finally, she contemplates and considers and realises the obvious and natural thing the baby craves the most, and she feeds the baby from her own milk.
Mawlana Rumi says this is what we are like. That within us is something that is crying and yelling for sustenance. And that thing is our soul. And it wants the only thing that can nourish it and bring it peace but instead we give it all kinds of other things. We go out and book a new holiday or buy new car and go from one impulse to another but whatever we do that yearning for something more substantive remains and we just can’t seem to solve the problem. And so perhaps it isn’t what we seek, it is how we seek it.
Imam Abu Hanifa once said, "If the kings knew the pleasure we are in, they would send their armies with swords to take it away from us." That is, pleasure derived from an other-worldliness and proximity with God, in contrast to the highest position and status worldly life has to offer. The beauty of Ramadan is that it reminds or reveals even to the most sinful and wretched amongst us something of this pleasure. As we spend a month struggling against the lower-self and drawing nearer to our Lord, our soul is nourished in a way that no worldly attainment in the remaining eleven months comes close to doing. It is proof that happiness is not only attainable, but the natural state for which our hearts and souls were created. It is our fitra.
A saint once said the prayer, “Lord, soothe burning hearts with the coolness of faith”. Ramzan is akin to the manifestation of this prayer, and the potential catalyst for us achieving a happiness that is permanent and meaningful.