Many months ago, the New York Times featured an article about languishing, the feeling of stagnation, emptiness, and general blah that many have had throughout this pandemic. Because of this long period of pulling back and putting the breaks on so much of our lives, the author, Adam Grant, describes it as “looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”
I found this concept intriguing but it didn’t quite resonate with me, and I was compelled by a critique from Austin Kleon who described the state as dormant instead of languishing. He notes that dormancy describes something that is latent but capable of being activated, only temporarily inactive, always with the possibility of awakening. Kleon’s wife is a gardener, and he pulls many metaphors from her talents, which made me realize that this concept is so deeply connected to the Biblical notion of shmita, outlined in this week’s parsha.
God describes that just like God created the world in six days and then rested to allow for Shabbat and what it might offer the world, we develop our fields and grow our crops for six years. Then, just like Shabbat, we stop. We let the ground lie fallow, dormant, inactive, to see what that year may offer. It’s a completely different way of viewing what it means to step back. It is not pulling away to take a break from, it is stepping back to allow for something.
This requires a particular astuteness to know what to expect from different situations. No farmer would expect to grow crops during the shmita year, so they likely wouldn’t be disappointed when - surprise! - no crops grew. Similarly, Kleon argues that one would experience languishing if they were hoping, trying to flourish, but couldn’t. Of course, this has been the reality, to varying degrees, for many of us these last two years. I think that these concepts, when coupled with the shmita practice, can offer us a spiritual framework for thinking about what we can actually gain, what do we allow for, what could we possibly give way to. How could we name and create a different reality that diminishes disappointment and actually allows for more growth?
When we change our understanding of what a situation is and allows for, we actually can make space for something else. We give way to something new that can only be the outgrowth of stepping back and letting the ground rest. We are not giving up on a field that we are letting lie fallow. We are not saying it will never produce crops, and we are not saying that it only sees its future through hazy lenses. So, too, with ourselves.
So many of us are still feeling a sense of urgency to get back to the way things were, to busy ourselves and fill our calendars. I hope that we can take a cue from shmita and Shabbat and try to create meaningful rest that doesn’t strip us of things that enrich who are, and helps us find a sense of deeper connection. I hope that this Shabbat provides each of us with dormancy in the best way possible, a type of deliberate inactivity, allowing for what may come.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
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