It is a curious feature of our contemporary culture that when given time off we often fret over lost wages and possibly squandered opportunities. This was especially manifest during the recent snowstorm that wasn’t. The ensuing spate of criticism at the National Weather Service and local weathermen and women for getting it wrong and bringing New York City and the other boroughs to a standstill, the Monday-morning quarterbacking and the expectation that they should have had a better handle on these predictions were nothing short of ludicrous. Since when is the weather watch and forecast an accurate science? And what makes us think that we have such a solid grip on Mother Nature in the wake of all of the other quixotic events that have played out in recent years? The meteorologists were just low-hanging fruit and easy targets for a lazy and jaded media world.
The real story is elsewhere. It lies not with snow bluffs and ice patches as much as with our inability to live with downtime. We are so hardwired for work and productivity, so convinced that we always have to be on the move, even if many of our efforts are spent in vain pursuits and absent true industry, that we have lost the ability to stop and smell the roses or in this case roll in the snow or skate on the ice. Sadly we have been socialized away from the positive and constructive purposes of leisure, and unable to see the obvious gifts in a day away from the office and the salutary effects it can have on our spirit, bodies, and above all family life.
We no longer know how to chill, inside and out.
We bring our work home with us thanks to our laptops and tablets. We are always on call and never off. How often do we sit with so-called friends at a restaurant only to be disturbed by the call that “I just have to take”? And when one’s date fortunately gets up to use the restroom it becomes that gifted moment to pull out the smart phone and check those emails that cannot wait. Think of the poor modeling we are doing for our children. Already in the grip of social media and joined at the hip to their phones, we only add insult to injury. We all seem to suffer from a chronic case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). For all of our new-found conveniences and for all of the devices and equipment we were led to believe would simplify our lives, we remain busier than ever, enslaved to our work and other invented obligations and urgencies.
I once had the opportunity to spend some “quality time” with some Amish families. Evening time was somber and quiet as the children lay resting on couch-like mattresses while the older girls and women did their handiwork, sewing and quilting, and the family elder and other men read from their Bibles by the light of a kerosene lamp. Sounds boring? Except that they were resting and refreshing their bodies and minds. My wife and I were once at a wedding in downtown Chicago at a hotel on its celebrated North Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile. As we left the hotel she said “let’s take a 10-minute vacation and enjoy the sights with a leisurely stroll.”
For a minute I was lost. I knew not of anything like a 10-minute vacation. How do you do that? It even sounded foolish to my overworked self. She had me close my eyes and disengage and try to relax, gently guiding me down the street in an altered state. She had a gift of insight and adjustment that I had never before experienced. How sad I thought to myself. We live our lives like hamsters on a wheel, often going nowhere but in our heads. We think that to be harried and hurried is to be productive. It is nothing more than false economies and wishful progress.
In Hebrew there is an expression, “yatzah secharo b’hefseido,” namely, there are situations in which one ends up losing all that one has gained by what is in the end actually lost from the efforts expended. It’s a kind of zero-sum game. We produce but we still don’t get ahead. This describes so much of our hamster-like nocturnal wheel turning. We are in a constant state of movement but get nowhere. We were given the gift of a weekly day off but so many people throughout time, and often aided by the dictates of their host culture, chose to fly in the face of this spiritual and physical corrective.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel refers to the Sabbath as a “sanctuary in time.” And the noted Zionist and Jewish cultural thinker Asher Ginsberg (also known as Ahad Ha-am) famously stated that “more than the Jews keeping the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” For this reason, Scripture says about God Himself, with two words stated in tandem, that after creating the world in six days, on the seventh “shavat va-yinafash”—He rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17).
Hence, we who are created in His image must do no less; and with this we can be doubly blessed. The noted psychiatrist Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, in his Passover Haggadah commentary, remarks that the Jewish traditional and desired mindset is that “we work in order to rest,” hence the wording of each daily psalm that is stated as part of a progression towards the Sabbath day itself. Contrast this notion with what he contends is a prevailing attitude in general society “to rest in order (to be able) to work.”
I am reminded of the Chassidic story of a man observed by his Rebbe running about his business in a frenzied state. The Rebbe who saw him so fitfully engaged asked him where he was running to, to which he responded: “I am running after my livelihood.”
He stopped the anxious man in his tracks exhorting him to reconsider his current pursuit of his livelihood. “What is to say that your livelihood is over there that you have to run after it? Maybe it is right here and all you have to do is stop for a second and see that it is not off in the distance but in front of you. Stand still and look for it here. Stand still and take in your surroundings. Look at the beautiful trees and notice the sun as it rises and sets. Take in the vistas around you. Watch your children at play and be there for them as they grow. It will otherwise pass you by.”
A snow day would have been the perfect day to stop, look, play, and not let the day pass us by.
By Rabbi Lawrence S. Zierler
