Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has called on the na­tion to use Eid-ul-Fitr to not on­ly cel­e­brate with the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty but al­so to in­tro­spect.

In her Eid mes­sage, Kan­ga­loo says while Eid marks the end of a pe­ri­od of in­tense and deeply re­ward­ing in­tro­spec­tion, self-dis­ci­pline and draw­ing clos­er to God, it is al­so, in many ways, “the em­bod­i­ment of the beau­ti­ful du­al­i­ty of our hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: of the ca­pac­i­ty for un­bri­dled joy and grat­i­tude on the one side, and of the ca­pac­i­ty for life-chang­ing spir­i­tu­al re­flec­tion, on the oth­er.”

She said the na­tion should learn from the wis­dom em­bed­ded in this bal­ance, adding that “it re­minds us that cel­e­bra­tion need not ex­clude con­tem­pla­tion.”

“It teach­es us that set­backs are of­ten fol­lowed by growth and progress, and that op­pos­ing emo­tions, such as hap­pi­ness and sor­row, joy and sad­ness, can co­ex­ist and en­rich the way we view and in­ter­pret life,” Kan­ga­loo said.

She added, “Let us ac­knowl­edge that in our hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, there come both times of joy and times of sor­row, times which al­low us to cel­e­brate our suc­cess­es and times when we are re­quired to dig deep­er, ad­just our mind­sets in the face of our chal­lenges and dis­ap­point­ments, and search out pos­i­tive sources of light. I be­lieve that, were we to tru­ly mod­el the prac­tices and the mes­sage of Eid, and were we to em­brace and ap­ply the won­der­ful ex­am­ple of our Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters, we would be able, as a na­tion, to over­come all chal­lenges and un­lock our full po­ten­tial.”