Sometimes the solution isn’t about tackling the reality, but about altering what we tell ourselves about that reality.
A single comment changed my Yamim Tovim. It was seven or eight years ago, and we’d just gotten back to the office after Pesach. There was a flurry of “How was Yom Tov? “Beautiful! And how was yours?” “Amazing.”
But Shoshana Friedman and I lingered over our conversation, getting beneath the shiny surface. “At some point on chol hamoed,” I admitted to her, “I got so frustrated. I worked so hard up until Yom Tov. And this was supposed to be a break. But it wasn’t! There was so much work – all the cooking and serving and clearing and cooking some more. Entertaining the kids. Company. This was not a vacation.”
“Yom Tov isn’t a vacation,” Shoshana responded simply. “It’s a break from the action at work — you don’t have to juggle job and home, there’s just home. But it’s lots and lots of work.”
Oh.
Today, I laugh at my younger self. Duh! But back then, that mindset switch was a gamechanger. For years, I’d had this idealized — and entirely unrealistic — vision of Yom Tov. As soon as I moved it from vacation category to no job work just home work, I was in a far better place. Pesach still meant endless peeling, cookies that disappeared faster than I could bake them, bored kids who wanted to go on spectacular trips, and a floor that always seemed to be carpeted with matzah crumbs. But the resentment and disappointment melted.
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