Life epiphanies, the hajj, politicians and how to make a change

This is my weekly newspaper column published in The National today.

As this year’s Haj pilgrims make their way back home, they will be travelling with mounting expectations of major life changes.

Tradition gives them a new honorific, haji or haja, and with this comes an elevated status, one that each pilgrim must live up to with new-found piety.

More important than what others expect is what the pilgrims themselves anticipate – a real change in their own actions and lives after their pilgrimage.

Completing the Haj is seen as a moment of epiphany. The old hedonistic life must be abandoned, as the body and soul experience a transformation that leads – or is supposed to lead – to a life of goodness and devotion.

For many pilgrims, this is just what happens. The extraordinary nature of the Haj creates the right conditions for them to step out of the smallness of daily life.

The new environments, experiences, people and challenges of the Haj, coupled with the religious experience after lifelong anticipation, can bring about a true new beginning.

Even ordinary travel can create some of the conditions for epiphany. Many people craft voyages expressly to create the conditions for a life change that they have no other way to trigger.

My own experience of motherhood had a similar effect, throwing me into a novel and unexpected struggle, and giving me a whole new perspective on life.

Events like these force us outside of our routines, and thrust us into challenges so radical and transformative that we are almost guaranteed to rethink how we live and what we want from life.

If you’re seeking an epiphany, take note that these big life events are most transformative because they are public, meaning those around us have also bought into the upcoming change. This helps us maintain our own inner momentum.

For the returning hajis, if their quest was intended to trigger a life change, they may find that their friends and family will be even more zealous than they are in policing the move to piety. With motherhood, too, your social circle accommodates and supports your change.

In other cases, there is no public marker for major personal change – this is where sustaining a life reform becomes challenging. There is nothing external to send people a signal that you intend to be different now, so those around you may not understand, support or accept it.

In some cases, too, changing your mind about major matters can be seen by others, especially those outside your immediate circle, as evidence of weak-mindedness. This is particularly a challenge for social and political leaders. We leave them almost no room for epiphanies and improvements in their way of living and working.

For leaders, sometimes the only change permitted is one that comes through social and political pressure. In this case other people, with their challenging, unapologetically in-your-face views, are the agent of transformation. Their opinions create the conditions required to trigger an epiphany in the leader, but also the broader social conditions that allow prominent people the space to change.

The return home of the pilgrims is symbolic for all of us. The hajis have their epiphany to spur their change. For the rest of us, this can be a spur to create the right conditions in society so that those who wish to change their attitudes and lives have the chance to do so. We can do the same for our leaders. There’s a transformative thought.

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