While I am slowly catching up with things this weekend, I want to share some reflections from the training I did this week. It’s part of my psychotherapy diploma training in Existential Analysis. One of the topics was about waking up, and some questions were asked for me to reflect on. Why did I wake up today? What motivates me to wake up?

The first thing that came to my mind when trying to answer the questions was that I wake up because I *can*. Because this morning, I *am* alive. I have been given the gift of life and my eyes open for yet another day. How many people have gone to sleep and their eyes did not open? So for me, to wake up is to say “yes” to life. And that, for me, is not just something that stops with my physical body waking up each morning. It is a spiritual waking up. An existential waking up. An existential saying of “yes” to life at every moment that I am awake, alive.

I must be honest and say that not every day is sunshine. But even if on some days I wake up to a rainy day and it is just so much nicer to stay in bed and do nothing, it is still a day that I have been given the gift of life, the gift of existence, and perhaps, on this particularly cloudy day, it is Allah’s divine wisdom that I should experience the darkness of existence and not the light. And perhaps, it is by experiencing the crushing waves of darkness that I can fully, existentially appreciate the gentle, rising Light of dawn when it rises again, enters through the veins of brokenness and beautiful Life springs from the depth of my being. And this, for me, is the meaning of Fajr. The call to answer the gift of Life. When Life asks you the question, “Are You Alive?” will you stand up and give your answer, “Yes, I Am.”?