The picture above, unfortunately, is summing up my Ramadan so far.

 

Ramadan began on Friday as the sun set and the first fast was on Saturday. Every year, for one month Muslims fast every day. They do not eat from sun up to sun down. This is the most base level of the fast. Additionally Muslims do not engage in other sinful activities being especially mindful of refraining from hurtful language, lying, backbiting, and a variety of other things.

 

I came into this Ramadan with very high hopes. It seems I may have expended much of my excitement in the lead up and am already somewhat drained. Part of the difficulty of this Ramadan also lies in the very long days. Fasting until 8:30 is a much different story than fasting until 6:30. By the time the fast opens it feels like your whole day has escaped while you had little energy to do much.

 

When I was younger fasting helped me understand how hard it must be for people who don’t have enough resources to attain basic things like food to get out of their desolate situations. While you are fasting you can observe the heightened difficulty in concentrating, in being motivated to push yourself or even just accomplish your basic daily tasks. Through our daily struggles Muslims come to be able to better empathize with the poor, hopefully motivating them to give more in charity and to have more compassion for their brothers and sisters.

 

I will try to write a little bit about Ramadan every few days to help me stay conscience of my personal progress and also to provide some basic information for people who might not know much about Ramadan or understand what some of the Muslims they know are going through this month. I also hope it can be an open forum for discussion or questions that anyone might have.