This year has been a tough one- a sudden leap from my blissful Gap Year to stressful first year of a demanding uni degree, having to make decisions I never even imagined I'd be put in front of, and some close friends moving on, changing, moving away, getting married, having kids, getting on with their lives. It really has been one of those 'stone being fired to diamond' phases (conceited as that sounds). And from all this, the lesson that I think I've finally learnt is, the importance of solitude, of being left on your own.
I didn't realise until this year how dependent I was on my friends and their opinions and advice when making decisions- and I don't mean that in a peer pressure kind of way, I mean it genuinely, I value their opinions because I respect them and look up to them. But it seems I'd been bubble wrapped until this year; I'd never actually been left alone to make on-the-spot big decisions all by myself, and the fact is, we never really know ourselves until we are alone. Even the ahadith emphasise to be wary of the those deeds we perform when we are alone.
And while this isn't a totally relevant example, I guess it's time to add a bit of humour to this blog so: it was always easy to avoid handshakes with males when I was with my friends. A huge bunch of Hijabis. If one of us declined, the rest wouldn't get offered one. This year however, I experienced possibly the most awkward moment of my life so far. It was the second day of uni and there was a staff-student social kind of lunch. I was late so I joined the queue as my cool new friends sat down to eat and saved me a seat. A lecturer came up to me to introduce himself and stuck out his hand for me to shake, and I put my hand on my chest and said, 'Oh...I don't shake hands...religious reasons.' BUT with my wonderful luck, the poor fellow didn't hear me. Suddenly, he puts his cold, wet water bottle into his other hand, starts wiping his handshake hand on his chest and says, 'Oh! So sorry! My bottle made my hand wet!' and sticks his other hand out again. As you can now imagine...I wanted to die. Or a chandelier to fall to divert his attention away from me. Or something. Finally, I explained all over again, to get a 'Oh...right...sure...' from him, before we had a quick intro with lingering awkwardness, and moved on.
The point is, as babyish and obvious as this sounds, things have been tougher without the huge group of Hijabis around me, but it's good. I really feel like I've grown up this year more than I ever have before (you know there's progress when your own mum tells you you've 'matured' Yep, she used that word). I'm becoming the person that I think I more or less will be for the rest of my life.
When I first came up with this idea for my blog, I was thinking more along the lines of alone time, reflection, contemplation- that kind of solitude. But upon reflection and looking back on this past year, after all the struggle, complaining, the 'what am I doing with my life' moments, the pre and post exam breakdowns, it hit me that all in all...it's been a good year for me. Not enjoyable, but good. Not fun, not something I want to repeat, but good. It's moulded me, even if only slightly. Alhamdulillah.
Anyway, it would do no harm to write a little about my original idea. Individual alone time is more important than most of us think. Most of the time it's so easy to go with the flow, follow the crowd, we barely think about what we do. And hopefully most of us have decent friends so the price to pay for that kind of carelessness isn't too harsh, but still- it's not a risk we should be taking. Reflecting, evaluating...these things are vital. A while back one of my mum's friends was saying that even 10 minutes of reflection and alone time everyday can make a world of difference to our decisions during the day.
So far I feel like Shahr Ramadhan really has allowed me to reflect, think about my seemingly smallest decisions, and I hope that by the end of it I really do feel detoxified and ready to jump back into a tough second year of uni, socialising, and well...life, I suppose :)
