Headaches

Five-thirty in the morning and I am tossing and turning. "Oh God! I forgot to take the aspirin!"

I stopped eating for the day at 5:04. Some of us like to leave a little safe zone before the moment when we calculate that first light arrives and fasting begins. (What would happen, I wonder, if I actually went outside and looked? Does the cosmic watch really have a minute hand?)

But now it is definitely too late: dawn is creeping up out there. The bedroom windowpanes are just a shade lighter. And the thing I had wanted to do most of all to prepare for this day inexplicably remains undone. I haven't Staved Off the Headache.

Headaches are very common in the first few days of Ramadan, as the Muslims reading this know all too well. Some unfortunates struggle with pounding temples during the whole month. Toxics are the major culprit, and smokers have it the worst, they say. Thankfully, that's not my problem. (I knew a marvelous little man in Turkey years ago who would set his pack of unfiltered coffin nails on the dinner table a good half hour before fast-break time, and stroke them with a lover's longing until the call to prayer resounded and he could finally light up.) For me, it's coffee. If I don't have my cup of coffee in the morning, I'm useless. And if I don't take the pre-dawn aspirins that fend off the the splitting head that comes of not having coffee THE WHOLE DAY, I'm worse than useless. Could be I'm a little toxic myself.

Well, deal with it. But how? Ramadan removes some other customary outlets like, for instance, being crabby. It's not enough for us to stop eating and drinking and smoking and making whoopee during the daylight hours -- no, we're also supposed to talk nice. If somebody tries to pick a fight, the ideal is simply to walk away while telling them "I'm fasting." With a smile. Could I manage this without a cup of coffee? Without coffee, I'm the one who is most likely to be picking the fight! Isolation is definitely my best bet.

Of course, there are headaches and headaches. I am giving up coffee. The news informs me that aftershocks are terrorizing Indonesia.

In the beginning, before we take on any spiritual work, the headache I have got is likely to stand in the way of my registering the headache you have got. It's the exact opposite of the "log in your own eye" model of Jesus' parable (peace be upon him). While your sins do tend to look much more important than my sins, my pains tends to feel much more important than your pains. Even if my pain weighs a mote, while your pain weighs a mountain. "Leave me alone, I don't want to think about it." Ouch.

Part of the object of Ramadan, though (and of related spiritual efforts), is to find the path that links my discomfort to your discomfort in a lasting way. Then what I suffer, however small it may be, helps me to grasp and honor what you suffer, however great it may be. We are joined first in empathy, then in mystery.

How exactly do you stave off an earthquake? What are any of us to make of the trials that we endure?

Funny, my head still hurts. But it no longer feels like a very big deal.