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In another two weeks it will be Ramadan once more, the blessed month of fasting. For me, my twenty-fifth attempt to ward off evil and become more conscious in my actions.

O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may be mindful of God.

Quran 2:183

The first time I attempted to fast, I was not a Muslim. It wasn’t a very onerous fast in those days, for Ramadan coincided with the darkest days of January then, with sunset falling at around half-past four in the afternoon.

Nevertheless, it became part of my attempt to reform myself, after a disastrous first year at university repeating earlier mistakes all over again. Having cut myself off from friends to become almost a recluse, I found myself on a mission to reset my life and start over.

At the time it wasn’t a great success, for being perennially open-minded I chose to subject myself to both sympathetic writing and anti-Muslim polemic. While on one side the spiritual essence of the faith called out to me, contemptuous screeds published by evangelists were capable of pummelling that respect to smithereens.

Nevertheless, by the following Ramadan I would proclaim myself a believer — albeit one still extremely unstable. The test of my first fast as a Muslim would not be abstention from food and drink, but observing it in the presence of my Christian family on Christmas Day.

For what it’s worth, my parents — my mother a priest and father a long-serving lay preacher, soon to pursue ordination — were remarkably tolerant of me, allowing me to do as I pleased in their home. Their hope, probably, that I would soon grow out of this rebellious passing phase and eventually return to normal.

In truth, the reason that my announcement of marriage three years later was greeted with such hostility was because it served as confirmation that it wasn’t a passing phase at all: that I was in fact serious about it, and really believed in it. Which was and is, of course, true. I was pursing the Oneness of God and a means to reform my soul.

Over the past two and a half decades, my fasts have become gradually better. I can’t say I have ever found Ramadan particularly easy. In that, I don’t mean the abstention from food and drink, but rather its deeper requirements: to remain steadfast, pure of mind, selfless in deeds, intentional in actions, vanquishing the lower self.

I have never been on the level of my pious companions, capable of standing my nights in prayer, earnestly reciting the Quran and devoting themselves to profound worship. For me, Ramadan is a period when I strive to remove the worst impulses of my self, with limited success. Almost without fail, I stumble by the time the month nears its end. Still, we have hope in the mercy of our Lord.

Even if you’re not a believer, I think attempting to fast with these ambitions is a good thing: to become more present of mind, more conscious of your actions. Not to starve yourself for the waking hours of your day, but to achieve some semblance of calm serenity, during which you control your tongue and tame your thoughts. To take steps forward, not steps back.

For me, all those years ago and through every year since, it has meant to reset. To recalibrate. To become a better version of myself, if the Most Merciful wills. A journey all must embark on in the end.