08/04/2023
FOLLOW RULE 21!
In my teen years and subsequently, I advocated for a liberal lifestyle. Being liberal meant that I was unable to patch things up or be a sociable person, and anything that even slightly went against my nature either made the person in charge miserable or, in many situations, made my own life unpleasant.
Even religion had little significance in the liberal lifestyle, and those who knew me well thought I was even more of a skeptic. It may have been based on logic, and if such an idea had been presented to me, I believe that I might have been persuaded to follow what would be referred to as a religious path.
People like me have always been seen as outcasts in the culture where we have lived and grown up, because of religious and moral intolerance, and life has always been viewed as intellectually wretched even though we have all the needs. Such a person is constantly on the receiving end because the mental, intellectual, or cognitive dissonance either made such a person's life miserable or, if such a person never allowed the inner feelings to come out in his body language, the other people would unquestionably find such a person with a knife drawn.
Even after starting my career in journalism, I had my own identity and persona for many years. Yet, there was a flaw in my personality that made it unacceptable to my own family, let alone other people. My father (RIP) contacted my cousin, a barrister, for my study abroad, which was almost complete, at the point when my parents decided to send me overseas and I was prepared to quit everything - money, girlfriends, drinks, friends, etc.
Later, not once, but twice, I experienced a fortuitous deliverance from an imminent death. As a skeptic, liberal, or secular person, I question everything, including death, which I had never before accepted as reality. When people around me passed away from the same cause, it shocked me because if I had suffered or experienced it, I would have gone down in history and people would have written my name with the RIP symbol.
The loss tanked everything for me for a while after the blow, and when I finally recovered, I was a new guy. I would refer to the three weeks I spent in transition and recovery as a twenty-one (21) day cushion because it allowed me to evolve into the person I am today, who is significantly different from who I was before the cushion when I was a proponent of an immoral or un-Islamic way of life.
This month of Ramadan we should take it as a divine opportunity and develop such habits in 21 days or in thirty days which bring about a good change with our inner self as has been the requirement of the Holy month. No doubt the change is very cumbersome in the beginning but as we buy new pair of shoes for the Eid festival: for the first few days, they will feel uncomfortable .But if you break them in for about three weeks, they will fit like a second skin.
Please follow twenty one days of experience for a good life after Ramadan.
