Preparing for a Month That Will Change You
Ramadan is coming. Here’s what awaits, and how to prepare for a journey where hunger becomes a teacher and emptiness reveals fullness
When the Stomach Falls Silent, the Heart Begins to Speak
Ramadan is almost here. Can you feel it approaching?
There’s something wild about what’s coming when you really think about it. We live in a world that screams “more, now, faster” at every turn. And we’re about to intentionally say no to food, water, and desire—for an entire month. It feels almost revolutionary. And that’s exactly the point.
For Muslims around the world, Ramadan isn’t just about skipping food from dawn to dusk. It’s more like a 30-day intensive in being fully human—not in the biological sense, but in the deepest spiritual sense. It’s about remembering what we’re actually here for.
And here’s what gets me: these lessons aren’t locked behind any religious door. They’re universal truths about what it means to be human, wrapped in the practice of fasting. And they’re waiting for us, just days away.
The Ego That Fire Couldn’t Break
There’s this ancient story that just perfectly captures what fasting is really about. When God created the ego (nafs in Arabic), He asked it a simple question: “Who am I? Who are you?”
And with breathtaking arrogance, the ego shot back: “You are you, I am me.” Total independence. Complete self-sufficiency. Sound familiar?
So the story goes, this prideful ego was thrown into the fire—again and again. But the flames couldn’t humble it. Turns out fire can burn, but it can’t break pride.
Then came hunger.
Only when the ego felt true, gnawing hunger did it finally surrender: “You are my Lord, I am your weak servant.”
This is the secret hiding in plain sight. Hunger cuts through our illusions of self-sufficiency like nothing else. In the month ahead, we’re going to feel a truth most of us spend our whole lives avoiding: We’re not in control. We’re not self-made. We’re deeply, completely dependent.
The Little Pharaohs Inside Us
Okay, uncomfortable truth time: we’ve all got little tyrants growing inside us.
When we get everything we want, whenever we want it, this miniature pharaoh starts building a throne in our hearts. It’s sneaky—we don’t wake up one morning thinking “I’m a god now.” But pay attention to how you feel the next time you can’t get your morning coffee, or your Wi-Fi dies, or someone has the audacity to tell you no.
That flash of anger? That’s your inner pharaoh throwing a tantrum.
Ramadan’s coming to shake that throne. It’s going to say: You’ve got food at home. Money in your pocket. A fridge full of possibilities. But you can’t eat. Not because the food isn’t there, but because the permission hasn’t come yet.
This is where servanthood stops being some abstract religious concept and becomes real. You’re sitting at a table full of food, stomach growling, and you’re just... waiting. Waiting for permission. Waiting for the right time.
And somewhere in that waiting, something clicks. You realize: This isn’t my table. I don’t own this. I’m a guest.
Building Bridges Between Worlds
You know that famous quote—”Let them eat cake”—supposedly said by a queen when told people had no bread? Whether it’s true or not, it captures something important: if you’ve never been hungry, you can’t really understand poverty.
Sure, you can know intellectually that people are hungry. You can read statistics, write checks, and feel bad about it. But until your own stomach twists with real hunger, until you’ve felt that weakness from going a full day without food, you don’t really get it.
This is going to be one of Ramadan’s most beautiful gifts: it builds bridges between the comfortable and the struggling. When we fast, we won’t just think about hunger—we’ll actually feel it. And that changes everything.
Because empathy isn’t just thinking about someone else’s pain. It’s carrying a piece of it in your own body.
The Teacher Called Absence
Most of us live in ridiculous abundance. Water flows from taps. Food shows up with a phone tap. Entertainment never ends. We’re drowning in blessings we never asked for and barely notice.
And that’s the problem: when something’s always there, it becomes invisible.
Think about it. The air you’re breathing right now? You weren’t thinking about it a second ago (okay, now you are, but you get my point). Your legs that work? Your eyes that see? Your heart that beats without you having to remember?
Completely invisible.
Ramadan’s about to introduce us to a different teacher: absence. Remove something temporarily, and suddenly its value comes rushing back. One sip of water after a day of thirst? That’s not just hydration—that’s a miracle you can actually taste. That first bite at sunset becomes a gift you genuinely notice.
As one teacher beautifully put it: “Allah closes the door to the stomach so that absence begins to speak.”
Through absence, we’ll remember the value of what’s present. Through temporary loss, we’ll rediscover what we already have.
Who Are You Really Thanking?
Here’s something that’s been bugging me: If you don’t know who to thank, does gratitude even count?
We’re good at saying “thank you.” Thank the waiter, thank your coworker, thank the algorithm that somehow knew you’d love that song. But most of the time, our gratitude stops at the surface.
There’s this metaphor I love: imagine you feed a chicken every single day, but it keeps laying its eggs in your neighbor’s yard. The chicken got confused about whom it should thank.
We do this constantly. We thank the doctor but forget who designed the body’s ability to heal in the first place. We thank our “luck” but miss the orchestration behind those coincidences. We say “time heals all wounds” as if time itself has some miraculous power.
Fasting strips these veils away. You’ll have bread. You’ll have hands. You’ll have a mouth. But you still can’t eat. Why? Because it’s not about having the means—it’s about having permission.
That’s when it hits you: I thought I was feeding myself all these years. But actually, I was being fed.
And that realization? It redirects your gratitude from a thousand secondary causes straight to the Source.
The Freedom to Say No
We’ve got a weird definition of freedom these days. We think it means doing whatever we want, whenever we want. Buy it now. Eat it now. Say it now. Satisfy every impulse the moment it appears.
But is that really freedom? Or is it just slavery to our impulses?
Real freedom isn’t doing everything you want. Real freedom is being able to NOT do something even when you want to.
The sentence “I want to, but I won’t”—that’s where willpower is born. That’s the moment you step away from pure animal reflex and into actual human agency.
Animals don’t have “later.” They only have “now.” When an animal is hungry, and food is there, it eats. End of story.
Humans? We’re supposed to be different. We can see food and choose not to eat. We can feel desire and choose restraint. We can want something badly and still say no.
The month ahead? It’s training for this uniquely human superpower. Thirty days of practicing the power of not. Not eating. Not drinking. Not indulging every single impulse.
And here’s the radical part: if you can hold yourself back from what’s allowed, you’ll stand way firmer against what’s harmful.
Think of it like strength training for the ego. You’re building your self-control muscle, and that muscle keeps working long after Ramadan ends.
Breaking the Automatic Loop
Most of us? We’re basically on autopilot. Wake up, scroll, eat, work, eat, scroll, sleep—rinse and repeat, barely aware we’re doing it.
We eat because the clock says it’s lunchtime, not because we’re actually hungry. We speak without thinking. React without pausing. We’re technically alive, but are we really present?
Fasting’s going to break that loop. It throws sand in the gears of your automatic behavior.
You reach for your morning coffee—wait, I can’t.
You mindlessly grab a snack—hold on, it’s fasting hours.
You’re about to gulp some water—not yet.
Each of these interruptions becomes a tiny moment of awareness. You get yanked out of autopilot and dropped into the present moment. You notice. You choose. You consciously decide.
And here’s the beautiful part: that awareness starts spilling into everything else. You catch your thoughts more. You stop yourself before snapping in anger. You pause before speaking. You wake up to your own life.
The opposite of sleepwalking through life isn’t being super religious. It’s being awake.
When the Noise Dies Down
There’s so much internal noise in our normal state. The stomach never shuts up—it’s always demanding something, planning the next meal, craving this or that. And when the stomach’s that loud, it drowns out everything else.
The voice of conscience. The whisper of purpose. Those deep questions about meaning and what we’re doing with our lives.
But when we fast, something shifts. As the stomach goes quiet, the heart finally gets a chance to speak. And we start hearing things we’ve been too distracted to notice.
Questions bubble up: Why am I actually here? What really matters? What am I serving with my life? Where is this all heading?
These aren’t comfortable questions. They’re not supposed to be. But they’re the ones that matter.
Some people get cranky during Ramadan because they don’t know what to do with that empty space. We’re so used to listening to our feelings, drowning discomfort in pleasure, staying constantly distracted.
But that empty space? That’s where the miracle happens. That’s where we meet ourselves for real, without all the usual buffers and distractions.
As one teacher put it: That emptiness? That’s where a human actually becomes human.
The Army of Unity
There’s something powerful about everyone doing the same thing together. When everyone around you stops at the same time, starts at the same time—it creates this incredible social symphony.
Ramadan takes our scattered, individualistic community and transforms it into something organized and unified. Not an army of violence—an army of discipline, unity, shared purpose.
The rich person and the poor person? Hungry at the exact same hour. The CEO and the janitor? Breaking their fast at the same moment. In that shared experience, equality stops being an idea and becomes real.
And there’s spiritual wisdom in this. Individual prayers are beautiful and necessary, but collective prayers hit different. A solo voice is moving, but a whole chorus? That creates something way bigger than the sum of its parts.
Mercy is drawn to togetherness. When people show up at grace’s door together, even the weakest ones get pulled inside by the strength of the group.
What Should Stick After the Month Ends?
Here’s the real test: what actually stays with us after Ramadan? When the calendar flips, and we’re no longer fasting, what will have changed?
If fasting was just about being hungry, it’d be over the second the month ends. But that’s not the point. The point is transformation. The point is becoming different people.
Four things should stick:
1. Gratitude—not vague “thanks for stuff” but actually knowing who to thank and for what. Gratitude that rewires how you see everything.
2. Willpower—not the power to do everything you want, but the power to not do something even when you really want to. The strength to say “I could, but I won’t.”
3. Humility—that bone-deep understanding that you don’t actually own any of this. Not your food, not your health, not even your next breath. You’re a guest here, not the landlord.
4. Unity—knowing we’re in this together. That none of us makes it alone. That we rise and fall as a community, not as individuals.
If even one of these sticks? The month did its job. This is what we should be preparing our hearts for.
The Iftar Moment
There’s this moment at sunset we should get ready for. We’ll be sitting in front of food, the call to prayer will sound, and suddenly—green light. We can eat.
But pay attention to what happens inside you in that moment. It won’t just be relief. It won’t just be “finally, food!”
There’ll be this feeling of rightness. “I followed through, and now I’m being given what I need.” There’s real dignity in that. A quiet joy that has nothing to do with the actual food.
We’ll understand what it means to be servants—and we’ll realize servanthood isn’t about being degraded or diminished. It’s about knowing your place in the universe and being at peace with it.
A real guest doesn’t barge into the kitchen demanding to be fed. A guest waits, receives with thanks, honors the host. That’s not a weakness. That’s grace.
For Everyone, Really
You don’t need to be Muslim to get these lessons. You don’t need any specific theology to see the value of:
Choosing restraint when everything around you screams “more”
Feeling discomfort to actually understand other people’s pain
Breaking your autopilot patterns to wake up to your life
Building real willpower through practice
Redirecting your gratitude to the actual source
Creating real community through shared discipline
These are human lessons. They just happen to be wrapped in a religious practice.
Whether you fast during Ramadan, do intermittent fasting, observe Lent, keep Yom Kippur, or just take regular breaks from comfort—the principle’s the same: sometimes you need to empty yourself to understand what you’re actually full of.
The Question You’ll Need to Answer
Here’s the question we should be ready to ask ourselves at the end—the one we should keep in our hearts from day one:
“Who did I become this month?”
Not “What did I accomplish?” Not “How many prayers did I do?” But “Who am I now that I wasn’t before?”
Because if we’re the exact same people at the end as we were at the start—if nothing shifted inside, if no habits broke, if our perspective stayed the same—then we didn’t really fast. We just got hungry.
But if something cracked open... if we see ourselves differently... if we notice blessings we’ve been walking past... if we discover strength we didn’t know we had... if we feel even a hint of what it means to surrender to something bigger than ourselves...
Then the month did what it came here to do.
One Last Thing: Preparing Your Heart
The world isn’t something you can grip tightly. The tighter you hold it, the more it slips through your fingers like sand. But hold it lightly, with open hands and trust? It becomes lighter. Life gets spacious.
Ramadan’s going to teach us this—not through lectures, but through silence. Through an empty stomach that becomes a classroom. Through waiting that becomes worship. Through hunger that becomes humility.
And when our hearts finally learn to speak—when they have enough quiet to actually be heard—what they’ll say is pretty simple:
You’re not your hungers. You’re not your impulses. You’re not your automatic reactions.
You’re something way deeper. Way larger. Way more meaningful.
You’re someone who can choose. Who can restrain. Who can wait. Who can serve.
You’re, in the fullest sense, human.
And that realization? That’s worth going hungry for.
Ramadan is coming. Are we ready?
The month’s coming whether we’re ready or not. But if we step into it with awareness, with intention, with our hearts already leaning toward what it wants to teach us—then every hungry moment means something. Every moment of waiting becomes worship. Every moment of restraint becomes transformation.
Let’s prepare more than just our meal plans and prayer schedules. Let’s prepare our hearts. Our intentions. Our openness to change.
Let’s get ready to meet ourselves honestly.
Let’s get ready to be changed.
May we all find the courage to sit with emptiness long enough to discover what fullness really means. 🌙