Fasting

828 million people in the world are hungry.¹ That is roughly one person in ten on Earth.¹ The UN has Zero Hunger as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.²

Without food, I become a trainwreck of a human being. Basic courtesy leaves me, the colours of the world fade away and are replaced with a raster of scorn. I am consumed by a grim outlook of the world and self-contempt to match.

For its followers, Islam preaches that their followers should adhere to Ramadan; they should for a month deprive themselves of water and food for as long as the sun is up. My personal difficulies with this aside, I find that practise deeply sympathetic; you put yourself in the shoes of those less fortunate. It serves as a reminder that the things one takes for granted are precious. It is a humbling thing to do.

The experience of practising Ramadan in Muslim countries and communities, is no doubt quite different than from approaching it from a secular western perspective. Muslims tend to look forward to this as something they do together, and breaking the fast is often a feast with family and friends. The whole community comes together in a sense of shared burden, a bonding experience.

In March and April of 12023, I fasted. No food or water from dawn to sunset. Given my utter inablity to be a decent human being when deprived of food, I barely thought this would be possible.

The first few days were difficult, but I was pretty isolated from my surroundings anyway, and did not have to interact much until dinner. So while I had a hard time, at least my lousy mood did not have to stain my relationships.

At first, my tactic was to set my alarm before dawn at 5 am, go up and have a fairly big meal, and then try go back to sleep again. Falling asleep is not the easiest; it would feel like my stomach would pump my body full of energy from the food, making it difficult to go back to sleep. A bit after going to bed after eating, I'd have to get up again to empty my bladder. Sleep was bad, and concentration problems followed the next day. A week into it, I overslept the four alarms I had set before dawn, with no recollection at all that they had rang. I figured that this was my body telling me to stop the nonsense.

The Muslims I knew would eat suhur, the last meal before dawn, at roughly 1 or 2 am. After my body had mutineered against my 5 am alarms, I figured I'd stay up until around 1 am and eat then instead. Of course, that ment more hours between the meals, but this proved an easier tactic overall.

Sunset and thus my "breakfast" (litterally) was at roughly 20:30 in the evening. After a day without food, I'd be very low on energy and have an oversized meal, eaten without celebration in front of the TV. That would be followed straight away with tea and chocolate or snack. A mere four-five hours after this feast, it would be time for suhur, and despite still being very full, I'd stuff myself again. Forcing down food for the sake of it is a rather unpleasant experience.

Overall, the fasting negatively impaced my concentration, sleep, and rendered substantial amounts of time useless as I was too low on energy to perform. Both work time and free time suffered from this. I'd have to sleep way longer than my culture deems acceptable, but fortunately I have a work-from-home job with great flexibility. When my Muslim friends told me about how this was a festive season to look forward to, these words were totally alien. Since I was doing this on my own, with no rituals, no celebrations and no ceremonies, the idea of looking forward to this period of numbness and time-waste did not resonate.

A few things surprised me. As stated, without food, I underperform on a level I rarely see in others. The first few days were indeed miserable, but maybe four days into it, it was really quite manageable. Some days were pretty alright, others bad, but overall manageable — I had anticipated it to be much worse. However, it still had plenty of impact. I found my concentration at an all-time-low, an unfortunate timing as I was new at my job and needed whatever mental capabilities I had at my disposal.

What surprised me more is how little this changed my outlook. I started this in order to put myself into the shoes of those less fortunate. Yet, I did not feel humbled. Perhaps I already possessed sympaty for the hungry before starting the fasting — but more likely is that I simply neglected to think about the people whos shoes I'd ventured out to put myself into.

Not only had the fasting thus taken the energy from what little free time I had and colour away from my life; I had also through my neglect deprived the whole excersise of meaning.

Image credits

1. Figure 1: AI-generated image for the prompt "Timeglass in sand".

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