10th day of Ramadan

Chicken!
What can be learn from a chicken?
People call chicken to those who don't have any audacity of something. But in this writing I'm going to tell you what a chicken really can do and we can't! It is then somehow stronger that us. Really?

Well, last night Mr. Mulyadi told me about chicken in his taraweeh speech. Chicken can actually fast much longer than we can do. The hen or the mommy of chicken can brood on the eggs before they are hatched about 21 days or three weeks. We human just fast 14 – 18 hours a day. What is behind this? It means we Muslims cannot actually just doing fast in Ramadan. Merely doing fasting in Ramadan is not extraordinary. There are lots of things we need to do and focus on them. Fasting is just one of them. A mommy chicken does better that us in terms of keeping itself from eating for hours and days.

Another animal which is better that us in a way of keeping from eating is snake. Snake changes its skin regularly and to do this this, every snake fasts for about 2 weeks. Snake has to pass this hard time in order that the skin can peel with ease.

Another thing I could share with all of you here is that, chicken and snake will change something within themselves after they endure this fasting. The mommy chicken will be quite tough as it has to keep its chicks from any disturbance. The snake in the other hand will look much beautiful in some ways as it has new skin. What Muslim need to learn from them is that, fasting in Ramadan is not just holding ourselves from eating, drinking and sexual intercourse (for the married). We need to hold our saying, thinking, behavior and all the bad things we have. At the same time we need to escalate our effort in charity, reading Quran and others in other months. The result of our effort will then come into fruition which is called Taqwa. This is indeed the ultimate goal of our fasting in Ramadan.

That is all I could share for now, I hope this note can be a good reminder that recalls in the future in case I forget some things I mentioned here. The paucity of knowledge doesn't necessarily limit our effort in making some mends this Ramadan, this should be emphasized. Happy fasting, let's learn from chicken and snake...

Tons of thanks.