Fasting month is annual ritual and also have particular tradition for Indonesia people. In this month which exists about mid to end in a year have its charm and remarkable memory for everyone who practices it for a month in without consuming any food and water in half of the day.
For me fasting month is not only about two things like I mentioned, but more than that. It gives me many chunks of memories in my spirituality as born in Indonesian Muslim society. Since I was kid, I have been taught to do fasting although I didn’t really stand to practice it full day. More years later, a small reward was usually given if I could stand for fasting in a day. And that’s a phase which kids sometimes expect if they do something good will be given a reward.
Fasting month gives an opportunity to enjoy a meal together with family every dawn and also in the afternoon where I rarely get the chance to eat together with my family in usual day. Also, the special cooking and food that my mom cooks by herself for us is not something I don’t want to miss for my latest year being a grown up especially before I start my own family.
There are some activities to do in fasting month that is not common in daily day such as praying Tarawih in the night and reciting Quran in the morning for two hours and later I can go sleep for half day. When I was kid, night was like a friend for me, because I ate a lot of foods (cakes) that I couldn’t eat in a day. In the dawn, we usually went into neighborhood area to wake up people so people can have their own fasting energy.
For a kid, the idea of fasting in a full month was terrifying and scary, I recalled in my kid imagination, people can die by fasting and they don’t have any energy to do everything during the day time. It was kind of mistake and I found it that when my mind becomes more open, it doesn’t work like that and still I usually don’t eat in day in regular day because sometimes if I get busy, I forgot to eat.
This year may be my last fasting month with my family (parents and sibling), maybe the next year I will practice fasting month with my own family. That’s it.
