Published in Skirt! in March 2010

The Jewish Sabbath is a festival of liberation, but for the uninitiated, it can also be quite a workout.  No work is done on Shabbat, no commerce transacted.  In the first winter of my observance, I diligently prepared Shabbat dinner every week, rose early on Saturday morning, and walked two miles to synagogue.  My enthusiasm carried me so far.  But once I left shul, my resolution faltered.  It was always the little things that tripped me up: stopping for a cup of coffee, hopping on a bus, nipping into Rite-Aid to see in my favorite shade of lipstick was in stock.  Treating myself to a tuna sandwich, pickles, and potato chips at the tumble-down deli by the architecture school.

From a material standpoint, I needed none of these things.  Yet I could not still my acquisitive impulse, my psychological need to assert my identity by spending a few dollars.  The very idea of not carrying a wallet frightened me.  When the film You’ve Got Mail debuted, I shamefacedly recognized myself in Tom Hanks’s grousing: “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.”  I didn’t want to be the person who needed to order a “Tall! Decaf! Cappuccino!” in order to acquire “an absolutely defining sense of self.”   

Twenty-five hours without spending money hardly seems like a marathon.  After a few months of being repeatedly waylaid by my fixation on petty indulgences, I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me.  Why did I crave this constant flow of small expenditures?  I soon realized that spending for comfort was a pattern set early in life.  I grew up in genteel poverty, wearing hand-me-down clothes, going without the expensive orthodontia my classmates had, sharing a room with my brother until 7^th grade.  But my mother loves small indulgences: ice cream runs, two-day vacations, baubles from the dime store and the dollar store.  Her cure for almost any grief turns on “self-care,” buying a new outfit or a distracting DVD or going out for a meal or maybe just dessert.  It isn’t about conspicuous consumption; she buys books at the bargain table and hoards coupons.  Her theory is that the mere act of spending, even in a conspicuously modest manner, brings solace.  

This psychological tic mirrors larger social attitudes.  Money is a tool we use to make identity; it is something we use to assert our individual tastes and self-worth.  It is also a symbol of independence.  For many Americans, carrying a wallet is the most fundamental act of citizenship.  A child’s beginning to carry money is, like carrying a latchkey, a rite of passage, one of the first small steps towards adulthood.  A college student’s acquisition of a credit card in her own name is a later, larger step.  Losing control over one’s own money at the end of life is one of the most painful symbols of losing the ability to care for oneself.  

Even in these cash-strapped times, many people find it humiliating not to spend constantly—a sign not just of poverty, but of lack of freedom.  When I first explained the concept of Shabbat to my friend Weina, she listened intently and then announced, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”  “Why not?” I demanded.  “Well,” she countered, “what if you need to go to a movie?”  Chuckling, I explained there was no such thing as “needing” to go to a movie and that there were, in any case, six other days of the week on which I might see any films I felt I “needed” to see.  Weina merely shook her head.  To her, declining to spend money one day out of seven seemed painfully restrictive and antisocial, almost antagonistic—she could hardly imagine a leisure activity that excluded the possibility of consumerism.  Like many people I knew, she was convinced that a person just couldn’t function in American society without constant recourse to her wallet.

Leaving my wallet at home on Saturday has sometimes isolated me.  It means letting go—of certain indulgences, of certain bargains, of certain opportunities for entertainment and socializing, but also of a certain fussiness that pervades the six wallet-carrying days of my week.  Gradually, I’ve come to see knee-jerk spending and workaholism as similar neuroses—they are both frantic attempts to define oneself by some external, universally understood yardstick.  There is dignity in labor, to be sure, but not in unceasing labor; a fully human life is marked by days of labor and days of rest.  And just as everyone needs some intervals of freedom from labor, so too does everyone need some intervals of freedom from spending, some moments of leisure and letting go.

I do take pleasure in spending, just as I take pleasure in my work, but I don’t want either to define me totally.  There is joy in treating oneself to an expertly made cappuccino on a rainy Sunday morning; there is joy in debuting a new outfit at the office.  But there is no joy in feeling that you’re no one without a credit card in your pocket.  In the end—it took me several months to make the leap—I learned to go happily cashless on Shabbat.  I learned to relish life within the confines of what I already owned and what I could have for free: my thoughts, my prayers, reading, singing, conversation, nature.  For me, the restfulness of Shabbat comes from leaving off spending, even more than it comes from leaving off work.  It is a pause that allows me to be at rest with my identity, instead of constantly seeking to define and redefine myself through a stream of mundane or adventurous purchases.

If you’ve never done it, try it.  Pick a day, anticipate your needs, and leave the wallet at home.  Eat from your own cupboard; drink your own coffee.  This is not about spending less; it’s about getting in touch with your mind, your soul, and the richness of the life you already have.  For one day, let your identity rest on what you find in your own home and what you find within yourself.  And then go back to the hurly-burly world of getting and spending, mindful of who you really are, with or without the cappuccino.