One Week Reflection Part 2: Managing Food and Sin

This was my second Ramadan objective:

• No food, water, sex of any kind, swearing, or sinful thoughts from sunrise to sunset

Let's look at this objective, and break it up into its three parts:

1. No food or drink from dawn to sunset
2. No sexual activity of any kind from dawn to sunset
3. No swearing or sinful thoughts, again, from dawn to sunset

Not eating or drinking is something your body can largely get used to. After a few days, I don't really start to feel as hungry in the late afternoon. I'm someone who doesn't really eat a whole lot anyway, and as long as I'm busy, food isn't a major necessity for me. Out of the 15 hours or so I fast each day, I can do 12 pretty easily just off of routine, and the last three off of discipline. Lack of water and the "suhoor struggle" I previously wrote about are my biggest challenges when it comes to eating. There is so much we don't know about nutrition, and the amount of food we need each day. When you fast, you get a good sense of how mental your diet is. You start to realize how often you eat just because you think you should be eating and not because you're hungry. 

Something I struggled with during the first week was coming home earlier than normal from work because of Ramadan hours, and not eating as soon as I got home. Since I get home by 2pm each day now, and the kids are in school until four, me and my wife have the opportunity to breathe for a second, and enjoy ourselves as husband and wife and not mom and dad. Time such as this is usually made more special by being able to have a meal together without the Rugrats running around. These are times we meet up at, or drive over to, one of the restaurants in our neighborhood and enjoy some quality time over some quality food. Half the time, we won't even be hungry when we do something like this. It just seems like food and free time go together, like food and watching a game on television. So we've learned to use that time to figure out something else to do (which doesn't include doing each other, as you'll read more about very soon). Maybe each of us does something task oriented, but within the same space without distractions. Or maybe we just do something we normally we do, just without food. 

I'm also able to recognize the many times I reach in the cabinet for a cookie or two just because I'm upright. Fasting has shown me that I don't have to suffer from that accumulation of all those empty sugary calories. I can be more disciplined than that until it becomes natural, like it used to be for me. I'm getting back in touch with a lot of the habits I acquired during my healthy journey a few years back, and have somewhat moved away from over the years. Fasting has shown me in this way, and in many other ways, that instead of becoming something new, I'm more interested into transforming back to something I was.

The sexual activity thing is not so difficult. I am a teacher and father of a three-year-old and a nine-month-old; while school is in session, I don't have much time for, or willingness to commit to any act that may bring more children into my life. Usually, after sunset is the only time I have for such activities anyway, so this isn't one of the more difficult aspects of the fast. Oh but wait, hold on. Yeah that's right - masturbation is sexual activity. You cannot self-pleasure. You can't even listen to Michael Jackson's "Beat It." That may lead you down a slippery slope. And that connects to the hardest part of the fast to adhere to - no sinful thoughts. I've come to realize that my thoughts are pretty much dominated by sin. Mostly in the form of profane internal outbursts and fleeting thoughts of murderous mayhem driven by road rage, Facebook, and probably the hunger I've boasted about defeating. 

I used to think that most of my sinful thoughts were due to sex, but either I'm purposely avoiding such thoughts so that I don't fail at one of my other objectives, or I'm just a lot more psychopathic than I previously thought. Swearwords and negative thoughts pop in and out of my head faster than I can filter them. And I consider myself to be a generally positive person. I'm probably wrong about that. I've come to realize that the only way I can master this challenge is it by not feeding the environment that breeds these kinds of thoughts. Occasionally, it's as easy as stopping myself and reaching for a better thought, but mostly, what I have to do is recognize that I am in control of, and the cause of the type of environment that feeds negative thoughts one way or another. I am able to see the root cause of my thoughts, and not just attribute them to the top layer of reflection that I normally limit myself to. For example, the aforementioned the road rage. Though I am much much less angry on the road than I used to be, I still have multiple instances of anger on any given morning. (I'm much less relaxed going home of course, because I'm not racing against the clock most of the time, and neither are most other people probably.) A lot of this anger is due to me trying to have as close-to-ideal conditions as possible, to be able to get to work early enough to settle in comfortably. Using a method similar to "The 5 Whys" is a good idea to get to the root of this problem. I come up with three reasons why I have road rage, and I'll focus on one: because I'm trying to get to work on time. Why am I always trying to get to work on time? Because I live far. Why do I live far? Because I value my neighborhood over proximity to the school. So I know that I won't move any closer. Dead end. Let's do some more "why" work. Why don't I have enough time from where I live to be able to get to school without rushing and raging? Because I don't get up early enough. Well no that's not true, I get up very early, I just choose to do certain things during the early hours. Why do I choose to do those things at that time? Because I don't think I can get them done during other parts of the day? Well here's a solution - schedule all of my tasks for a week see if I can get my usual early morning tasks done at some other point in the day, thus leaving me with more time to get out of the house earlier in the morning. This way, I can drive much more relaxed, on an emptier road, and always have time to settle in once I reach work. This is how creating a better internal and external environment can ward off a lot of the negative thoughts which manifests themselves in a very real and hurtful way to my mind, body, and soul.

So as you can see, I'm working on the stuff. Actually, this blog is proof of that. I wrote this after choosing not to do my hour long morning walk this morning and arriving at work a half hour early. Instead of going in to the school building and accumulating the stress of the school day a half-hour early, I sat in my car and banged out this post. Since this is something that's pretty important to me, I would have had this on my mind all day. Now I can go in and focus on the work I need to do. I'll return to this post to do some editing before I publish it, but the meat of my work is done. Progress.