III. ADVENT.

The late Charlie Kirk's last book offered advice on opting out of the rat race.

It was the culmination of a period that began in 2021, when Charlie, on the advice of Dennis Prager, first began observing the Sabbath, turning off his phone for a period of time every week. Initially, he managed only an hour. But as he discovered that it unlocked a completely elevated version of himself, he began to expand the time, until he was offline from sundown Friday to mid-morning Saturday—and later, until as late as Sunday morning. My phone would be on in case of an emergency, but people knew not to contact me unless there was a catastrophe that couldn’t wait for 24 hours.

During that time, we would rest. I’d let him sleep in on the weekends. The babies and I would go out for a walk in the morning, and I’d have coffee ready for him when he woke. The television stayed off, except for a football game here and there. Mostly, we spent the day praying, going for hikes, sitting in the sun, journaling, detaching from the noise.

Some people have words they use to get them into a specific mind-set. For Charlie, that was Shabbat Shalom. Even at the beginning, even when it was for just an hour, he would begin the Sabbath with that phrase. He was verbalizing something vital: I am committing to a definitive moment in time. Shabbat Shalom. And with that, his weekly mental health vacation would begin.

Yes, that's of a piece with not checking electronic mail in the morning or understanding the distinction between what is important and what somebody else thinks is urgent.  The validity, or not, of "getting and spending we lay waste our powers" has long mattered in the ordinary business of life.

What ever happened to Mark Twain's hobbyist carriage drivers? To refresh your memory: offer them wages and they would give up the hobby. Tom Sawyer.

Next comes Daniel Hamermesh, formerly of Michigan State, now with Texas and Royal Holloway, with a properly Hamermeshian formulation. “It’s unfair if highly paid workaholics force their hours on others.” Yes, that's the traditional problem with free competition, perhaps the workaholics obtain their high pay by outworking everyone else. "By imposing their own long hours on others, highly paid people can end up forcing their subordinates to work harder than is fair. Perhaps this is a good argument for higher tax rates on very high earners – a sin tax to discourage them from working excessively long hours."

The weekly sabbatical (yes, the Hebrew for "seven" and "sabbath" share a common root) might help damp down the workplace stress that all that secular advice attempts to moderate.

Charlie wanted to heal the country, and he saw his conversations with students on campus as a piece of the puzzle. But when he was on campus, if someone was screaming at him, he knew they weren’t actually listening. When you’re constantly combative and fighting, you have no time to treat other people like human beings. Charlie genuinely felt that if the world had a weekly day of rest, just one, it would be the ultimate game changer.

The call to action here is very important. People will say, “Okay, this sounds great in theory, but how do I do it?” The answer is, it will look different for everyone. Charlie didn’t observe the Sabbath perfectly. There were times when he was traveling and he couldn’t do a traditional Friday to Sunday morning. So he’d have to adjust. But the Sabbath is the one commandment that if you choose not to do it, you are the one who’s missing out on the blessing. Not God. Even if you don’t believe in God, you still have to rest.

Put another way, it is more important to make the effort to be good to yourself, even if you sometimes fall short.  You do not have to feel guilty about disconnecting from the hubbub.  You have time: time management is work.  Outworking everyone else is hazardous to your health.  That breathing spell you're hoping for isn't going to happen.  Per corollary, it's easy enough to think you have to be on all weekend.  Those sports your kids are playing in?  Enjoy their efforts, put the electronic shackles away.

Yes, the Kirks couch their essay in sacred terms.

One day, your children will tell their children how you lived. What will they say? That you were always busy, always stressed, always distracted? Or will they say, “My father knew how to stop. My mother knew how to delight. They made time for joy. They protected space for God.”

Better that than "As I hung up the 'phone it occurred to me, my boy was just like me."