What We Learn When We Go Without

I’ll be fasting on Yom Kippur.   I’ve done it for most of my life.   And every year, somewhere around the middle of the afternoon, I find myself thinking about food.

And water.

Definitely water.   And yeah sometimes in more of a crave than a thought….

That’s hardly a profound observation.

But I’ve been thinking about the idea of fasting itself.

For 25 hours, we intentionally go without something that is normally a constant part of our lives.

We interrupt the normal rhythm.

We feel its absence.

And somehow, that absence creates space for something else.

That’s increasingly unusual.

We live in a world designed to make sure we almost never have to go without anything.

We’re hungry. Food can arrive at our door.

We’re bored. There’s an endless stream of entertainment.

We don’t know something. We can have an answer in seconds.

We can’t remember something. Our phone remembers it.

We don’t know where we’re going. GPS gets us there.

And now, with AI, even the friction of thinking through something can sometimes be handed off.

That’s incredible.

I make my living helping people think about how technology can remove friction and create capacity.

I believe deeply in its potential.

But Yom Kippur makes me wonder about the other side of that idea.

Is all friction something we should eliminate?

Maybe not.

Sometimes waiting matters.

Sometimes struggling with a question matters.

Sometimes being bored matters.

Sometimes sitting with a  thought instead of immediately getting answers is the best approach

Sometimes going without reminds us what we actually need.

I don’t think the lesson is that technology is bad or that we should make our lives intentionally difficult.

I’ll happily turn my phone back on.

But perhaps there is value in occasionally choosing not to fill every empty space.

Not every question needs an immediate answer.

Not every moment needs content or pictures.

Not every difficult thought needs speed.

Not every bit of friction needs technology to remove it.

Yom Kippur creates an interruption.

For those 25 hours, many of the things that normally occupy us are stripped away.

We go without.

We slow down.

We sit with ourselves.

And maybe that’s part of what makes the day so powerful.

Technology is going to become even better at giving us what we want, when we want it.

That creates enormous possibility.

But perhaps the human challenge will be knowing when not to use it.

Knowing when the empty space is actually the point.

This Yom Kippur, somewhere around that long afternoon when I’m thinking about a glass of water, I’m going to try to remember that.

Sometimes what we’re missing creates room for something we need.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.