Get Off Stage

The orig­i­nal Sab­bath did not have to do with fol­low­ing a bunch of rules. It was sim­ply the Divinely under­scored neces­sity for a break. We per­form our roles. We define our­selves by every­thing from our rou­tines to our hob­bies. We put on a polit­i­cal self, a reli­gious self, a fam­ily self, a job self, and a social self. The lay­ers cover the core of our being so thor­oughly that we for­get our essence.

We are on stage with roles to per­form. Each per­sona is exhaust­ing. None of them define us com­pletely. They all have some sort of prac­ti­cal value. We keep them up as an imag­i­nary oblig­a­tion to some sort of behold­ing audi­ence. The audi­ence has expec­ta­tions. They love con­sis­tency. Most of all, they love to feel secure in the scripts we have writ­ten. The stage lights dare not be turned on them.

This is an observer cul­ture. We sit in front of tele­vi­sion sets. We attend staged events. We read the news. At times we too take a seat in the greater audi­ence. Each per­son has his or her turn on stage. Fif­teen min­utes of fame is suf­fi­cient — so we think.

Have you ever thought about get­ting off stage and sim­ply walk­ing out of the the­ater of life? If you have, then your soul is beck­on­ing for soli­tude. It just wants to be itself for a while. It has got­ten so used to the lay­ers of selves that it is afraid to leave, so it con­tin­ues to carry the weight of its leaden-layers of expec­ta­tions. The lay­ers get thicker and heav­ier. One day the process threat­ens to crush the soul itself. That is when peo­ple make their most rad­i­cal choices.

Take a break. You really do not have to be a parent/worker/appeaser all of the time. Work-a-holism in our cur­rent era is not a reward­ing medal but an alba­tross to our essen­tial selves. We drag around our invented roles for the sake of an imag­ined secu­rity. That “secu­rity” will sud­denly end some­day. Why not dump it now — at least for a while?

Take a day off from yourself.