What Ramadaan has taught me.

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I’ve realised that Ramadaan and Fasting in general forces a person to realise their humanity.

First, let me clarify that… What is it that makes us human? OUR CHOICE. Unlike animals which react instinctively to any stimulus, human beings have the option of choosing how to react or even if they want to react at all to any particular stimuli (obviously this is not the case to every particular stimuli e.g. you get burned.. you jump… you don’t think about it).

But generally, between stimulus and response, we have a choice.

Now with the bombardment of western culture and philosophy through the media, has come modernity’s will to limit our ability to make that choice. Branding and inculcating brand loyalty is taking away our God-given right to choose. Let me illustrate this point… Marketing’s objective is to make us aware of products, induce trial and increase repeat-purchases of the products.

Now in order to achieve “getting consumers to repeat purchase”, Marketer’s have to affect behaviour by making consumers like the product enough to include it in their lives long enough for it to become a habit. For example, if you like a certain type of deodorant (for whatever reason), and you buy and use it often enough, after a while you don’t even notice it, it just becomes part of the the routine… a Marketer’s dream. Basically, your choice disappears… unless you get persuaded by another product’s marketing.

So what I’m saying here is that we get conditioned into…
Stimulus –> Response
Hunger –> McDonald’s/Steers/Wimpy/Spur, etc.
Thirst –> Sprite
etc, etc.

What Ramadaan and fasting does in this case is make you realise this choice we have whenever we are hit with stimuli. It widens our gap between stimulus and response. So apart from all the other benefits which fasting gives you, it makes us aware of the one thing which makes us different from all of the other creation in this world… Choice, our ability to choose.

Now take this thinking just a little bit further… if eating and drinking , something generally lawful, is made unlawful in Ramdaan due to fasting and it makes us realise our ability to choose at such a basic level regarding items which are critical to our survival. Then what of the things greater than that? our ideologies, our philosophies on Life, how we deal with people, who we have relationships with and dozens of other aspects which make up our lives… all of these are also subject to our ability to choose. If I know one thing it’s that brands are idea’s, the moment you choose one of them you are choosing everything associated with it, whether its the Glamour and Cutting edge of Diesel, the Affluence of Polo and Ralph Lauren, etc. You are buying into that idea, and now think if you really made that choice consciously, or was it all marketing?

The only question which again remains is… are we using our power of choice to manoeuvre all of these facets of our lives in order to achieve the ultimate goals which we have set in our lives? or are we just going with the flow and letting marketing make the choices for us? Will it go so far as to finally affect your choice of who you worship? How do you know?

If you don’t exercise your choice, then what’s the point of your existence?

Peace,

M.

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