The Feast between nostalgia and utopia

I do not subscribe to any nostalgic discourse that longs for old holidays, or indeed, old days. Nostalgia is a kind of modern-time disease, and our holidays are not immune to being infected by this disease.

To escape from living in the present, modern human beings have either postponed their ideal life to their utopias or left it in a past they fabricated through nostalgic discourses.

Instead of starting with "Where are those old holidays?", I find it much more valuable and much healthier to join in the excitement within today's holidays and to heighten this excitement. Of course, past holidays were also very good, and in those experienced holidays, there were infinite beauties that people lived through. Our longing for the days and holidays of our childhood may be valuable in terms of our lamenting some values that have slipped through our hands in the life we live. However, just as the holiday is something that closes the distances between people living today, it is also a state of consciousness that closes the distance between the past and the present, connecting both times to each other even if it does not make them identical.

While singing praises to the holidays of the past, let us not neglect to participate in the holidays of today, because when we do so, we do not truly celebrate the holiday. When we celebrate the holiday, we add whatever we missed in past holidays to it.

In essence, whether we want it or not, the holiday already gives us the opportunity to do this. That is why the holiday is a mercy of God upon us. It is a mercy that also falls upon those who are closed to the holiday. A mercy that, once it starts raining, wets everyone.

Despite all the conflicts and tensions that pass in between, having holidays that do not discriminate against anyone and connect everyone's life to one another is a great grace of God. Thinking about what our state would be if we didn't have these holidays might increase our gratitude, and as we give thanks, ways may open for us to strip ourselves a bit more of our swelling selfish traits.

The holiday is a grace of God to us. Within our lives flowing in heedlessness, no matter how far we have traveled, no matter how much we have changed, it gives us the opportunity to remember our essence, renew ourselves, get rid of our burdens, and purify ourselves from our stains. The paths we cover in our lifelines separate us so much from one another, alienate us so much from each other and even from ourselves, that we become unable to recognize each other or even ourselves; we look at everything differently from one another, placing our ego at the center of everything. The holiday arrives, descends upon that center where we placed our ego, and connects us to ourselves, human to human, time to time, path to path, heart to heart.

Within the holiday, there is a summary, a representation of a person's total journey in both this world and the hereafter. The meaning of this representation is so clear, so explicit that no one even falters in their role within this representation.

With so many miracles in this holiday, why doesn't it make the world a more livable place? What are these wars, these injustices? Such questions might crowd into mind. Yet the answer is simple: What if there were no holidays at all?

If holidays did everything in a way that stripped humans of their free will, there would be no room left for human beings anyway. The holiday is an opportunity granted to those who want to live their lives in the name of goodness and do good deeds; human beings are naturally free when it comes to celebrating the holiday and making the holiday a true holiday. Still, the holiday is a divine intervention in human life, and no matter how stubbornly human beings insist on having their own way, it is one of the best signs showing that there is good in what humans, within their limited, conjecture-based, ephemeral knowledge, consider evil, and sometimes evil in what they consider good.

For instance, do you see an evil in the US House of Representatives passing a resolution containing Armenian genocide claims? Look at the deep divine coincidence of this resolution being passed right on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, and you will definitely see uncountably beneficial aspects in this event that we know as bad. Let me state just one: Perhaps it saved us from a circle of fear into which we locked ourselves with our own hands. Yet that's all it is. For the sake of this fear, there are no concessions we do not give to the US around this time every period. Now let them think about the rest.

There is good in what we consider evil.

As long as we join the holiday at the right place and right time, that is, when the holiday arrives. That is to say, let us not get stuck in past holidays or postpone joining the holiday to future times.

The holiday is a mercy and blessing raining down upon our lives. May this mercy and blessing never be absent from you. Eid Mubarak.