To Stop Searching for Life’s Purpose
For some, Shabbat creates an opportunity to connect to the self and discover one’s life purpose. But it can also do just the opposite — offering us an excuse to stop madly seeking a purpose. As Rabbi Gunther Plaut has noted, long ago life’s purpose was simple and clear: survival.
In the premodern era, merely achieving adequate shelter, food, and clothing was an achievement to be proud of.
In the modern Western world when these things are less difficult to achieve (though we are mindful that they are still difficult for many), it has become less clear what life’s major challenge and purpose ought to be — and too often we cobble together some vague notions of “success,” “happiness” and “fulfillment.”
Shabbat affords an opportunity to step back from frantically trying to achieve these amorphous goals, to just be.