Stay hungry.

Stay hungry.

I didn’t find the growth that I was looking for this Ramadan.

I wish I had, but I didn’t. Instead, I realized how much change could happen simply by remaining hungry.

Shaykha Iesha Prime, in a recent lecture said that “In this month of Ramadan, we were hungry. We were hungry for Allah’s ﷻ love, hungry for His mercy, hungry for His barakah, hungry to serve people, hungry for the Quran, hungry for a connection, hungry for the community, we were hungry.”

Every day we were obliged to empty ourselves from food and water, from vices and desire, and from delusion and distraction. And what remained was prayer and patience, recitation and rectification of the soul, and adornment of the blessings of Allah ﷻ.

When we truly empty all the negative and obstructive things that we sometimes let reside within us, only then can we come to openly move towards self-betterment and the completion of our being.

The Prophet ﷺ was understood to be Al-Insaan al-Kaamil — the Complete Human Being. He ﷺ is the example that any Muslim should strive to become. However, him becoming the Complete Human Being wasn’t something that was instantaneous. Rather, his status and rank in this world was the result of having a hyper-awareness his own state and the needs of his community and truly fulfilling what was ordained to him by Allah ﷻ.

There’s wisdom in revelation being sent down when the Prophet ﷺ was 40. Because the sunnah is to take the majority of your life as an opportunity to continually grow.

So, echoing the words of Shaykha Iesha Prime, “I want to tell you all to stay hungry. Stay hungry for anything that brings you close to Allah ﷻ — stay hungry.” Use Ramadan, not simply as a space for growth, but rather as a catalyst for real and radical change. Let this month not be the only time where you become your best, but instead let it be the beginning of a life-long journey of self-betterment.

Because the people around you deserve that. Your friends and family and everyone you care for deserves that. The wife or husband you’re destined to be with deserves that. Because the best parts of you honestly deserves that — and most importantly, the God that created us from a single aorta, that breathed life into us and made us all witness His Lordship deserves that.

Eid Mubarrat.