Unending Gratitude

Part 20 of a Multi-Part Series “Towards Religion and Meaning”

4 min readDec 31, 2019

Note: This is a multi-part series, if you haven’t read the previous posts, I highly recommend checking them out to catch-up before proceeding, here.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the chance to, for the first time in my life, observe Shabbos. For those who aren’t familiar, this is a time from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday where Jews are forbidden from doing anything perceived as work. There’s praying and eating and challah and such, too, but the not doing work bit is pretty important.

So, what is work? Well, you can’t light any fires or create any sparks (no electricity), but you can use fires that were lit before Shabbos. You can’t carry things on your person aside from those which make up your outfit (this includes things like glasses, yarmulke / hat, etc…). There are a lot of other ones such as not being allowed to tear things of a discrete size, no brushing of teeth with toothpaste (I don’t use toothpaste, so NBD), etc…

I learned a lot on Shabbos, but perhaps the thing I was most grateful for was to spend time with others and be completely present with them — without any interruptions. In this world where everyone and everything is trying to sell you something or steal your attention, it’s quite special to have an entire ~25 hours (you wait a bit after sundown on Saturday to be sure the sun is in fact down) devoted to rest, prayer, and community.

To enable my participation, the Rabbi so graciously put me up in his house for the night so that I could walk everywhere and wouldn’t need to carry anything on my person. Little acts like this are so common amongst the Orthodox community and I am so deeply grateful for their willingness to share with others their possessions and love for G-d. The handful of experiences I had had since the first study session only saw my gratitude to grow and grow for this vibrant and beautiful community.

Soon enough, this gratitude and love started spilling into other areas of my life. This isn’t to say that I didn’t have gratitude prior to these experiences, but rather that I began to embody the beauty and passion that this community had shared with me with others. I felt a newfound love for my fellow man and felt honored to have the people I knew in my life.

As a means of expressing this, I began to write letters to people in my life and those who I may not know as well but certainly appreciate. People are so beautiful but so seldom hear it, so I wanted to take a little bit of time to send them a physical gesture of appreciation and gratitude for their brilliance.

Carrying this mindset and attitude with me, I found myself so entranced by the people in my life and expressing it more than ever. I have always been a deep person, but I was now getting to something even deeper and more meaningful when I talked with others.

As a prior Atheist of 17 years, I chuckle at the idea of Judaism providing me with these attributes, but it’s true. You’re a product of your environment and I had been surrounding myself with some of the most selfless and kind people I had ever met. And let me tell you, it’s a truly wonderful way of living your life.

Thank you all for reading up to this far, this has been an unwinding of my own experiences and past relating to purpose and meaning. I hope it has helped you to clarify some of your thoughts and ideas relating to these concepts and am always willing to chat if you want to discuss further (you can find me on Twitter).

I’m going to be doing a retrospective of all of this next week and the following to really bring it all together. As a deeply curious person, I love exploring both sides of everything and deeply hope that what I compile there is able to bring some clarity to you regarding what it is that bring you meaning and purpose.

Unending Gratitude

Part 20 of a Multi-Part Series “Towards Religion and Meaning”

Written by Eric Olszewski