Waking up to the daily unsolicited alarm, not my alarm clock

For months now I’ve been sleeping in! I’ll own up to the fact, I have been sleeping in! I simply had no major reason to wake up early every day. I’m blessed with a rocking wife who will wake up and get the kids ready for school and let me sleep. I’m a lazy person on vacation. 

Now I find myself having to get up every morning to be to work by 7:00 a.m. and to boot I’m in a foreign country which makes my mind work harder due to language barriers, work load and general new job things. Getting up still isn’t easy, however now I have been given an unsolicited alarm at about 5:00 a.m. or so every morning. I say unsolicited because I don’t have to set it or worry if it’s going to go off or not. It’s the daily Muslim morning call to prayer. Living in Saudi Arabia is a new experience for me not just in the culture and language areas, but also in the uncompromising habits and dedications area.

For Muslims the daily call to prayer is an un-compromising habit. Many do it out of habit but larger portions do it out of devotion and dedication. We westerners could learn a thing or two from this, but I’ll get to this later on. Muslims are for the most part very devout in their daily prayers. They take time every day to pray in the morning, during the day (at least three times) and one last time at sundown. That is a total of 5 times at least and they are not simple “pray in a quiet secluded place” type of prayers, they are prayers that are called out by the clerics and people are expected to go to the mosque or to stop where they are at and pray. I’ve seen people flocking to the mosque and I’ve seen people in the park by the sea role out their prayer rugs (not a requirement) and start to pray.

So what have I learned from this in the first 4 days that I’ve been here in Saudi? Well I have gleaned several lessons from this and they range from personal devotion to larger discipline lessons. If you’re not Muslim, Jewish or Christian, you can still learn from this action and this devotion. I happen to be a devout Christian of the LDS (Mormon) faith and here is what I have learned:

• I need to pray more often. I don’t spend enough time in supplication to my creator. I don’t mean to become a religious zealot but why can’t I spend a few more minutes a day seeking guidance from the almighty? After all I have 24 hrs and I give at least 10-15 to my co-workers, family and friends not to mention down time for myself where I veg. A few minutes for my God won’t hurt me, but it can help me.
• If your not religious or even a person of faith, the same lesson applies. Why not spend a few more minutes a day in meditation or quiet thought processing some of the challenging points of life and pondering ways to overcome the difficult and extenuate the positive. Some of the best and most important people in my life don’t have a faith that they follow or a belief system that they adhere to and I think that they would agree with me that taking a few minutes to put the world to the side and focus on how to make things better would help them and perhaps those around them.  
• The discipline of taking time out of your day to focus on personal improvement has its value. I might not agree with many of the ways people do things here, but I do appreciate that they are disciplined enough to put first things first! Whether that is your beliefs, your health or your family, you need to put First things First. Not to steal Stephen Covey’s words, but you need to put those things in your life that mean the most to you in first place or those things that will give you the greatest return on investment first. Believe me, those things aren’t money, or possessions.

 

I suppose that being woken up every day with a call to prayer isn’t so bad. I might not flock to the mosque or immediately fall to the ground and start supplication or even start meditation/yoga, but I will now start to work on my personal discipline and my personal devotion and focus more on what is important.

Oh hey, I hear the evening call to prayer from the many Mosques in the city, so till next time, I’m going to go focus on first things first

Evan
Dammam, Saudi Arabia