In a relatively uncommon and mildly curious aligning of the stars (well, technically, it’s mostly the moon that determines these events but it’s the same general celestial area), the beginning of both Lent and Ramadan fell on the same day this year, on Wednesday this week.

As the rules of religion are moulded to fit us more conveniently, most Irish Catholics nowadays do the version of Lent that suits them and their tenuous health best.

For some of us, we’ll give up drink while others will turn their back on sweets, chocolate, or even cigarettes.

We might not be actively thinking about Our Lord’s 40 days in the desert but we are with him in spirit, so to speak, in focusing our minds and energy towards our bodies and wellbeing.

Love yourself first, and everything else will follow.

That’s not the ascetic mortification-of-the-flesh Catholicism of old, but we’re confident that no sane-thinking person ever really believed that black tea and beatings were ever God’s will.

Ramadan is analogous to Lent, lasting about 30 days with a daily fast of food and water, broken at sunset.

Both practices are intended to focus the mind towards a higher being, the One Above, by ridding ourselves of the shackles of excess and inviting us to live simply, basically, and to use all that extra brain power to think of higher, more fundamental things.

The same idea is preached too from screens and self-help sections but here repackaged as ‘clean living’, or the 16:8 fast, or decluttering, or grounding yourself.

The urge is the same; it’s that human religious instinct to find meaning and peace of mind.

Fasting, or clearing out the wardrobe, or foregoing wine with dinner all are efforts we make to give us space and figure out what meaning is left, once all the ‘stuff’ is gone.

Whether it’s Lent, Ramadan, or Marie Kondo, it all boils down to the same thing.

We have an urge to cut the crap out of our lives, and see what we can do with the space, time, and energy that’s left.

The truth is out there

We’ve all put our foot in it, by accidentally revealing the plans for a surprise birthday shindig, or the location of a top-secret hen party.

The consequences are usually inconsequential in the great scheme of things (even if the maid of honour is irrational and overreactive at the time), but don’t usually make world headlines. However, not if you’re the former president of America.

Obama, a man who presumably knows at least some of the filthy secrets of the Oval Office, put his foot right in it and told us what the lonelier corners of society have always known: the truth is out there.

Aliens are real. He tried to backtrack and say he hadn’t actually seen them and it was only a probability, but we know what we heard and his body language was unmistakable. We’ve all been there Barack.

You can’t sip your tea with fake nonchalence like you haven’t just told the bride-to-be it’s going to be Dingle after all.

Someone give that man a drink and a listening ear and ask him about the DB Cooper, the Mary Celeste, and the Third Secret of Fatima. He’s ready to talk.