"O you who have believed, decreed upon you is fasting as it was decreed upon those before you, that you become righteous." (al-baqarah: 183)

Every year, when it is time for ramadhan, i have been putting in my mind, 'fasting time has come'.

Without even realising the last part of this verse, we are obliged to fasting a whole month, so that we become 'righteous'.

While there were many trainings we have entered organized by our work place, schools and such, yet He  still provide this blessed month of ramadhan each year, for us to re-trained ourselves where other training might failed to do so.

What kind of training i'm referring to?

Well, let us look at how do begin out fast.

first, we need to put out our intention (niat) of fasting for the next day, so that our fast is accepted.

in our life, each night, before we sleep, we should put on our intention and our aim for the next day, if He still give the opportunity to live it on.

second, as prophet (peace be upon him), encourage us to sahur or have a short meal early before the dawn breaks in, as there is blessing in it. 

to wake up way before dawn, is tough. and the ability to wake up then, will trained us to prepare for tougher difficulties that might come ahead. this also show us to prepare really good before we do any work, and in ramadhan, before we start our fast. do not take fasting as a reason to be sluggish in carrying the work we ought to.

third, fasting also trained us to be trustworthy. while we fast, nobody will know whether we sneak to take a bite at a piece of snack and such, but only He knows..

and here in our daily life, it has trained us to be trustworthy in our work, in our life.. for example, if a company doesn't practive using punch cards for it's workers, coming and doing all the work entrusted to a person, depends on the trustworthy of each person. Same as taking bribery. 

fourth, in breaking the fast. in buying the foods or preparing the foods, we are not suppose to do it excessively until there is a lot of food wastage. we are also encourage to share our food when we break our fast.

it somehow remind us not to be such excessive shopper and not to be stingy with the money we have. as although we do not seem to have much, there are other people who are even less fortunate than us, and did we ever think about helping them, and do we ever doa the best for them..

this brought me to remember a story, that happened during the prophet year, there is a sahabah of the prophet, when he was about to go (pass away), he kept on saying, 'half of a date, and i will give it all'. and he kept on repeating it numerous time. And when other sahabah asked the prophet why did this sahabah kept on repeating the same thing, and the prophet told, this sahabah while he was healthy, in the month of ramadhan i think, and as he was about to break fast, and he only had a piece of date(kurma), and came a person, who is poor, asked for a some food to break his fast. as this sahabah had only 1 date, he broke the date into halve and gave half of the date to that person. so, as he was about to die, when he was brought to realize how half of the date, weight much in the eyes of Him, he regretted it and saying, he should had given the person the whole date, instead of only half.

and theses are the few things we actually trained without we even realize it when we are fasting in this month of Ramadhan..