Emptiness, confusion, and a loss of drive. These are very foreign emotions for someone like me, someone usually driven and excited.

As humans, we instinctively search for reasons, and so I found myself discussing this with my close circle. One conversation concluded that I may perhaps need to pay closer attention to my nutrition, movement, and sleep. Another conversation leaned toward burnout, given the extreme ‘usage of me’ on all fronts over the past year. A third conversation ended with a completely different solution: a new haircut and hair colour, which I actually did.

Somewhere between these discussions, questions, and layers of confusion, a reflection from Paulo Coelho’s The Manual of the Warrior of Light kept echoing in my head:

“A warrior of light often loses heart.

He believes that nothing can stir him in the emotion he so desired. He is forced to spend many evenings and nights feeling that he is one of the vanquished, and nothing seems able to restore his enthusiasm.

His friends say, ‘Perhaps his fight is over.’

The warrior feels pain and confusion when he hears such remarks because he knows that he has not yet reached the place he wanted to reach. But he is stubborn and refuses to relinquish his aims.

Then, when he least expects it, a new door opens.”

Paulo Coelho – The Manual of the Warrior of Light

What struck me most was how precisely it describes my state of losing heart. But there exists an opposite–regaining heart. How do I regain heart?

Interestingly, the conversations I mentioned earlier all arrived at the same answer, despite their different starting points: Ramadan. There was an almost unspoken consensus: Ramadan is coming. Ramadan will fix it. Ramadan will reset everything.

With Paulo’s words ringing in my head, I found myself wondering: Is Ramadan that new door? Something about that thought felt deeply right…but why Ramadan? What is it about Ramadan that feels like resolution?

Answers began to surface almost immediately. What emerged was that Ramadan is a mandatory reset button, not only through fasting, but something larger: the rhythm. Over time, we drift and get absorbed into pace, expectations, productivity pressures, technology, and endless stimulation. Gradually and almost invisibly, we shift from being human to functioning like machines. Coffee becomes our fuel for focus. Food becomes our fuel for energy, almost becoming tasteless at times. Connections become fuel for networking and our days become fuel for achievement. 

Then Ramadan arrives and quietly dismantles these illusions. The routine is imposed on you, and suddenly decisions reduce, the body slows, awareness sharpens, and you reconnect with something elemental. 

“I am hungry. I am thirsty. Yet I continue.” I wake at dawn for Fajr. By Maghrib, we gather to break our fast. We sit at the same table usually forgetting our roles, titles, or agendas, but merely as “hungry humans” sharing Iftar.

So why does Ramadan restore our sense of functionality as humans? Somewhere within that repeating rhythm, I see Time–its older rhythms, its modern structures, its emotional weight. Its fixed, predictable system and its psychological effect on us shows this interconnected relationship between Time, Productivity, and Rhythm, and how they shape our functionality, wellbeing, and continuity.

Within all these threads came a clear decision. Let’s begin to explore Time. Let’s research it deeply and see what it uncovers. Ramadan Mubarak, and happy resetting!