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25 Syaaban 1439H.
Guys, did you realise that Ramadhan is in a week time? Oh.. My.. Goodness..
ARE YOU EXCITED? I AM!
Even I'm happy that the semester is ending very soon, but knowing that Ramadhan, the most awaited month is juuuust right around the corner, I am EXTREMELY happy. I believed we all should, right? 😻
With that, have you ever wondered what should we do to welcome our guest? No? Yes?
For me, I did! I was wondering, what should I prepare myself with in order to give my best for this guest. Should we prepare some good food for it? Should we put on nice clothes to welcome it? Should we gather our family and celebrate this VVIP guest? Man, what should we do? I'm freaking out.
Then, Sr Farhana came up with these suggestions to me. Useful tips in welcoming this blessed month, insyaAllah. Very student-friendly and busy-people friendly in general.
Are you curious to know what she told about the 'secret recipe'? 👀
Well, get ready, correct your posture and go grab a pen & papers (if you like taking notes, but if you don't, I suggest you to 'bookmark' this page for future reference in case 🤓).
Okay families and friends, leggo.
DISCLAIMER: These are just suggestions, in case you have a better one, can you please share at the comment box down below for everyone's sake. Would love to know too. Thank you in advance mate!
1. Fast like this is your last Ramadhan
Ya Allah, to be frank, I always get emotional when people said like this to me. I mean, I know that's the reality. We will at some point of the time, be having our last Ramadhan and we most likely won't know that.
Thinking about my grandfathers who used to be with the family, breaking fast together and now there are not here with us to celebrate Ramadhan anymore, my heart hurt. But thinking on the positive side, we, who are still alive at the moment should be very very very grateful if we are being given a chance by Allah swt to experience Ramadhan again this year. InsyaAllah, amin.
So when we know that only certain people that will be selected to have this golden opportunity and if we get that precious chance again this year, use it to the best optimum ways we could! Allow me to give you an analogy.
Let's say we only have one month to spend with our parents before we go to jail. I bet most of us will try to do everything every single time with them. Some might need no sleep because they feel like they should use the time given to the max. They won't miss the time given even to a split of second. Right?
Same goes to our date with Ramadhan. If we treat this as our last Ramadhan, we would want to do all the good things with full sincerity and genuinely try to accomplish all those. Agree? So yah, when we got selected, prove that we really deserve it. PLAN YOUR TIME WISELY. We have a month to give our best shot. Are we up to this challenge? Ready Player 1.
2. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
P.L.A.N. Make goals. Let's ask ourselves, what we wanted to achieve this time? On what aspects we wanted to improve? Here, it is highly suggested that we include the Holy Quran in one of our goals, at least. And also, typically, majority of us wished to finish the whole Quran in one month right? If you are capable to do so, mashaAllah may Allah bless you. Go on. But to some people that are still struggling with that, that's okay guys. Try to improved the quality first and then we'll proceed with the quantity. You can choose one surah to read, understand, memorise and learn the tafsir about the specific surah that you chose. That would be nice as well.
Since everyone has their own desire/ goals, this plan is 100% unique to everyone of us. Before Ramadhan starts, let's just sit down, grab some A4 papers and start to list down all those things that we hope Allah can train us through Ramadhan. And if we see our friends are striving their best to achieve their goals, let's give them our strongest support shall we? Promise me 🤙🏻 (that's a pinky promise lol) Chaiyok guys! We got this!
And the remaining points would be pretty short.
3. Avoid Multitasking
"Wait what? Really? #multitask4lyfe"
Yes fam, multitask is good. But sometimes, we can't give the best that we have if we are not focusing on doing that one thing. So in this blessed month, let's try to provide the best services that we are capable of in making ibadah for Allah. A quality one insyaAllah
4. Minimize socializing.
Try to refrain ourselves from talking things that are not beneficial to us.
Try to refrain ourselves from having excessive entertainment and fun.
Try to refrain ourselves from gossiping about others.
Limit our communication to only something that can improve our faith, insyaAllah.
5. Keep your food simple.
Month of Ramadhan is a month for us to grab all the extra rewards that Allah offers to us. Keep other things simple like in this case, try not to spend too much time cooking extravagant dishes that can lessen our time to be allocated for our ibadah. Recommended dish for easy-to-go meals would be soup or tomyam. Prep and cooking time that wont consume too much of our time.
p/s: Do you guys have any other suggestions? I might get bored repeating these two meals for 30 days straight haha.
6. Finalize Eid Preparation.
Let's try to settle all those things for Eid earlier so that when Ramadhan comes, we can reserve our time only for supplications, prayers and good deeds. This is the time to keep up with our Ramadhan goals, geng!
7. Step Up Your Game
Think about extra stuffs that you can do to gain more and continuous rewards from our Lord. Maybe we can think of how we gonna turn our sadaqah into riskfree and high return investment. For example, buy an Al Quran and give it to the masjid, so that whenever someone reads it, you'll get the pahala too. How cool is that right? So yah, don't just be a dull. Start brainstorming now!
8. Plan Your Iftar When You're Having Your Period <Applicable for Ladies Only>
When we are not fasting, but still wanna get the same rewards as those who are fasting?
Feed them for ifthar!
Since we have extra energy during the day, why don't we help our housemates/ friends/ volunteers to cook for the breakfast right? Or maybe during taraweeh, we can still go to the mosque and help to take care of the kids while their parents are praying. Or maybe we can try to wake up early and cook for our beloved one who were tired the whole day before, for sahur. There's a lot of things to do to still get the same returns as those others. Be creative girls!
Hope this can help us all to plan for our Ramadhan goals and to seize the moment given to us. I prayed that we all have a blessed Ramadhan and manage to reach our target for this time being!
Oh btw, you are welcome to share your tips as well. Would love to hear from you too.
Ahlan ya Ramadhan!
Hoping this excitement last till the end,
Aini Syahirah
