What is a sabbatical?
I have been hankering to take a bite out of this question for years, and the time is now! This is in my mind because I am co-organizing a gathering in the Hudson Valley at the end of October.
The term sabbatical comes from the Hebrew root shabbath, the day of rest, and was adopted by Harvard in the 19th century to refer to a scholar’s year away from their institutional work. This specific application of the term recalls the ancient practice of taking a year (every seven years) to forgive debts, emancipate enslaved people, and let fields go fallow. For me it is, at its root—radically, meaning at its root—a home-leaving.
In a way I am advancing on the fifth year of my sabbatical – having left my institutional post at Meta on September 9th of 2022. This date bears a fun synchronicity for me, because it is celebrated in Türkiye as the liberation of İzmir where my great grandmother lived over a century ago. In a way, it turned into my own liberation-day—the day when I began thinking for myself.
So, here are a few introductory notes from my recent explorations:
First, it is easier to start by saying a few things about what a Sabbatical is not:
it is not for productive output;
it is not for tourism;
it is not for catching up on the dross of busywork, paperwork, and emailwork;
it is not for networking, sales, marketing, and the like;
it is not for ascetic isolation;
it is definitely not for “teaching relief;”
it is not for maintaining regular standing meetings with employees, bosses, colleagues, and teams.
All those things may happen in a sabbatical, but what exactly is a sabbatical for? What is the point of leaving a productive field to grow weedy and brown for a year? Why take one day after six, or one year after seven, to not work, or prepare for work, or catch up on work, or even think about work?
I scatter these questions for you to take and plant and ponder for yourself. I share my own answers here—some things I discovered for myself.
My sabbatical has been a time of learning about myself. It has been a long—delirious long, tortuous meandering—process. It has been so long because I never took one before and I had never been taught or even seen anyone take one in a way that looked anything close to refreshing or fun for me. So I had to invent my own way face-first.
Turns out its really quite obvious in retrospect (and only in retrospect) – I deliberately and robustly appreciate the pleasure and surprise in my work. Said another way: I do fun things and I do not do boring things.
Chores and the heavy lifting of mundane daily logistics are enveloped into the fun I want; they become precursors, preparators, and protectors—but only after I find what that blissful playful place in my own self. … and that took time and lots of hand-holding.
Ursula Le Guin, the comprehensive genius of depicting genius, wrote of this sentiment (paraphrased): “saints are never caught working! Their work is their play, delight, devotion, vocation, and, critically, re-creation.”
Simply—a sabbatical is the time for contiguous, persistent attention we give to the work we want in our lives. It is a time for contemplation, reflection, rest, solitude, silence, wholesome food, body-moving, and good, friendly companionship. It is a time for deliberate, intentional, and comprehensive curiosity about what exactly it is we are making for the world and ourselves through all our working.
All this introspection and stock-taking is not always fun and almost never easy. It is going well if the day ends with a deeply felt sense of pleasure of a hard job done well (although the process may be working just as well if the day ends in confusion and discombobulation).
A sabbatical requires a few key features which resemble both generally and specifically a well-worth-it adventure—and for this comparison I will bring in the great archivist of myth and human ritual and storytelling, Joseph Campbell. Specifically, my inspiration here is his description of the hero’s journey. Continuing Campbell’s thought, the founder of the Hero’s Journey Foundation, Michael Mervosh, makes plain that the hero of our age now is not some otherworldly demigod or fantastical fakir, but people in the world making a stand for themselves and the meaning of their lives.
The first step of the journey (and this is where I will end today’s missive) is the-leaving-of-home. A sabbatical adventure has not yet begun if you are comfortably ensconced in your home-office-tower. The leave-taking is beyond geographical movement—it is a leaving behind of structures of time, habits of thought, even value judgements of what is good or bad work.
A good beginning!