Struggle and submission occur at the same time!

Today is the eve. Tomorrow is the eid, the Ramadan holiday. When a poet said "let eids be like eids", it was not in vain. Our eid can turn into hell. We also have folkloric songs like "Today is eid, but I feel blue". No matter how gloomy we feel, we should work toward living eids through their real meaning.

The eid is certain days. However, every day we spend like the eve of the next coming day. We are waking to a new world every morning. It is a world that we know, but we cannot predict its consequences. There are millions of possibilities as to what will happen and what will await us. We should be ready to confront every possibility that our fate will bring to us or that await us at our door. Our task is to lay out our plans, give our struggle for the sake of them, and do our best. This is our great exam. There is no shortcut to a happy life other than working to become successful in this great exam. The definition of success changes person to person. Like the majority, we are defining being good, avoiding wrong or raising awareness and the work toward goodness as success.

Our interpretation of life is different. And the meaning of our interpretation may vary depending on time and conditions. What is unchanged is that life per se is struggling with us. All living organisms are fighting to survive. We are already showing a similar motivation as part of our biological program. Our hunger and thirst can stimulate us the way it wants us under its claws. We are trying so hard to survive. But even if all his/her needs are met, the human is obligated to show that he/she exists, open a way for ruling, identify a real or imaginary location for authority and must feel that he/she is ruling freely in that area. It is our nature of free will that demands it to be so. The human can only fulfill his meaning of the world through fulfilling this free-will skill in producing meaning.

We also keep changing. To claim our world of meaning is much more difficult than a shepherd claiming his own flock.

Our kids, for whose sake we would sacrifice the worlds, are not obeying us anymore. We don"t know when death will seize whom at what moment from which home. Think about epidemics, accidents… One"s close comrade in a cause can shift his side, say different things, and keep a distance from us. Our chief, whom we have always disliked, can take a humanly attitude toward us and thus we may welcome him as a pleasant person in our life.

We may consider a person whom we love as treacherous because of adopting his own path in a different way and can find ourselves spending most of the day trying to revenge him or her...

In this chaos at every new situation, we have to review our network of meaning. This is the essential struggle.

We are underlining the significance of the struggle, but it only comprises part of our attitudes towards life. If life were simply a struggle, if we could bear it, we would have been so exhausted that we would not have moved a finger. Life, with what it brings to us or offers to us with meanings, lifts our feet off the ground. We become so thankful and appreciate it. It is not rare when we express our enjoyment as in such expressions: Fortunately, we were brought into this world as a human being and witnessed that moment. Fortunately, I have been created as a member of this nation and this family. To be a mother, father, parent, son or daughter, citizen, comrade, friend, lover, our successes, our beloved ones achievements are fulfilling us with beautiful feelings. Not only pain or gloom, but also happiness and cheer exist in our lives. We don"t know what surprise awaits us where. We can be filled with gladness for having a soul and having a breath, among many other things. Thus, being grateful always involves the struggle in life.

Our life, the reality of our existence in the world is uniquely a sufficient reason for appreciation and in fact, there are many other things that we must be thankful for, too…

"Skills are God given gifts. Be modest. Fame comes from humans. Be thankful. Self-conceitedness is from your own, be watchful". The saying is not in vain. In order to be ourselves and fill our life with positive meanings, we say yes to the struggle; but this struggle must be accompanied with inquiring the wisdom behind the incident and the conscience of submission.

While considering and writing all these lines, I came across the words of Mehmet Akif Ersoy as follows, "Passion, trust… the two fundamentals of Islam… Without those, there is no possibility for stability in Islam. One should remember that neither pure passion nor trust without passion is ever sufficient". The poet is pointing at Muslims at the address of his words. However, I think that it applies to all humanity.

May your eid be blessed! *

* the general structure of this article has been quoted from myo book "Is there a meaning of life?"