A couple of months ago I heard a Terry Gross interview with Judith Shulevitz, whose book The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, discusses the history of the Sabbath and her own attempts to observe it within the context of a busy two-child, two-career family life. The Talmud forbids thirty-nine categories of activity on the Sabbath, including such things as baking, plowing, shearing; updated prohibitions forbid driving and urge limiting the use of electricity—and, of course, electronics.

Gross asked how it is possible to observe such prohibitions for an entire day with two kids, and Shulevitch admitted that her family has made compromises; they do drive for family outings, they do turn on lights, but they preserve some deep spirit of the Sabbath by spending time together as a family, and limiting both television and computer. The central purpose of the prohibitions, Shulevitch said, is to help human beings understand that they do not control the world. “For one day a week you let the world be as it is, and you be in it and try not to dominate it.”

This idea has gotten under my skin and been needling me ever since. What do I do these days that isn’t about trying to control—or perhaps I would say cajole—the world into doing my bidding? Listen to me; agree with me; hire me; pay me, cut me a break; love me, admire me, forgive me, entertain me, give me some space and time to write, read my books. It exhausts me to enumerate all this striving, the hutzpah, the me-centeredness that suffuses the activities of my day. It is a full-time job whipping this world into shape!

What great appeal resides in the idea of letting go for a full day each week, even for a few hours. To forget the striving! To hide the To Do list! To think about simply being!
(This concept is not the exclusive purview of Judaism; it is found in Buddhism and in branches of Christianity.)

But how can I let go without an entire culture to support me? Can I imagine setting aside a full day a week to honor this idea? Probably not—no, definitely not. What about a few hours once a week? Maybe an hour a day? Even a self-proclaimed hour a day is difficult, ignoring the phone, averting one’s gaze from that self-regenerating list.

But thanks to Shulevitz, I can sometimes get to this state of will-lessness for a few minutes at a time. I close my eyes, breathe as slowly and deeply as I can, and for a moment I seem to step out of time, feeling—even with dinner heating in the oven, lights blazing, my computer humming with urgent messages—that the world will happily go on without me.

(Pictured are two of my nieces who excel at letting go.)