Ramadan: Creating Empathy; Building Gratitude

It’s 12:30 and your friend calls you and says; “Hey, do you want to go for lunch?”. Your response “Oh, yes, I’m starving!”.

Starving! Really?

This is a phrase we throw around so flippantly without any real understanding of what it actually means to be starving. I have used it many times myself without a second thought. One of my Moroccan friends pointed this out to me recently when we were going for dinner and I said I was ‘starving’. He said he was surprised at how English speakers used this word. Weren’t we really just hungry, not actually starving? I was suddenly embarrassed within myself by how casually I had used that word for so many years.

Try to think of the longest amount of time you have gone without eating – and I don’t mean when you’ve been sleeping. 6 hours, 10 hours, 14 hours – perhaps longer? It was probably pretty uncomfortable; stomach growling, feeling light-headed, no energy. No matter how long the period was, you probably knew that a meal was eventually coming at the end of the period? Have you ever been in a situation when you DIDN’T know when the next meal was coming? Personally, I have never experienced this. And I know this means I have been very blessed in my life.

Ramadan is a month of fasting from dawn to sunset. Why? There are a number of spiritual reasons, but one of the main reasons is to create a reminder of all the people who go without on a regular basis. By feeling hungry for 12+ hours everyday for 30 days, we can develop greater empathy for those who experience this every day – perhaps with little or no hope of a meal at the end of the day.

Ramadan is a month of charity. According to their faith, it is customary for Muslims to give 2.5% of their total savings and wealth to the poor (above a minimum amount known as “nisab”). Although Muslims give money to charities and poor people throughout the year, Ramadan is a period when a significant amount of charitable giving takes place. The giver believes they will be purified by this act of giving. This article in The Guardian says “It is one of the largest forms of wealth transfer to the poor in existence” and suggests that this practice could end poverty.

So, for 30 days, people observing Ramadan will be building their empathy and gratitude. Then, they will carry this attitude with them into the following year.

This is a beautiful thing.

#ramadan #myramadanchallenge #fasting #spiritualjourney