The Answer Isn’t in the Wind

Bob Dylan, Charlie Kirk, and the Sabbath

Pop culture and timing is powerful. In the span of one day, I was watching the Biopic of Bob Dylan on Hulu, A Complete Unknown,

and THE song

I’ve heard it my whole life.
Everyone has.

(At least the song maybe not this version, but it’s a powerful version of it).

People say it’s a great song.
They say it “changed a generation.”
Then they move on like it didn’t just ask the most uncomfortable questions a human being can ask.

Maybe the greatest songs get ignored because they’re too damn truthful.
You don’t sing along to truth.
You don’t dance to it.
You sit with it like a good cup of coffee.

And most people don’t want to sit.

Maybe that’s why Dylan eventually sold out — not as an insult, just as a reality.
Or just got older. When truth becomes bitter, we add sugar.

And once meaning is diluted, it stops demanding anything from you.

That’s where Charlie Kirk comes in today. The news I was reading on Google said his book is sold out on Amazon and very much delayed for people that pre-ordered. I see on my Amazon app that mine will arrive Dec 23. Can you believe a book on the Sabbath became a sleeper hit?

Or was it because of the tragic event that led people to Charlie’s book?

Another question that came to mind “Will Charlie’s legacy by not only remembered but lived up to?”

It hit me as I was chewing over it, literally, with Bazooka Joe:

The answer, my friend, isn’t blowing in the wind.
The answer is Sabbath the book he wrote with his last words.

It’s one day a week where you stop consuming and start considering. When you take the time to consider, you take the time to make a contrast of things.

Doing absolutely nothing that you do for six days.
No producing.
No consuming.
No travelling.

It’s the hole in the donut — the emptiness that gives the rest its shape.

On Sabbath, I read poetry.
Great fiction.
I play board games with my kids.
We go for walks.
We get bored.

And boredom is the point.

In that space, I meet a different version of myself.
Calmer.
Less reactive.
The person I should probably be more often — not the dealmaker, not the optimizer, not the guy mentally opening his phone to see what Monday wants from him.

Just a human being with a quiet mind.

There’s a Substack I enjoy Poetic Outlaws
Beautiful writing.
Poems about escaping into nature, shedding society, reconnecting with your soul.

I love it.
But here’s what these poets never mention.

As they’re all humanists, they think we all live in a soul sucking economy and that meaning requires disappearing into the woods for three weeks, sweating through your clothes, fighting mosquitoes, and dodging snakes like you’re on some Costa Rican vision quest.

Fuck that.

America already built the solution into the calendar.
One day a week you don’t have to consume anything or flee civilization to “find yourself.”

You can do it at home.
Take a walk.
Read a book.
Sit still.

You don’t need a retreat.
You need a reset.

Because man wasn’t meant to escape society.
Man was meant to contribute to it.

We’re an ant colony.
We build things together.
We grow things together.

And after one honest day of rest, you get back to work.

Have you ever tried accomplishing anything alone?
Look at your bedroom when you don’t have help.
Your library.
Your office.
Chaos.

That’s why Sabbath matters.

There’s one more thing people don’t talk about.

One reason leaders can pull one over on us is simple:
we’re exhausted.

Seven days a week we’re working, consuming, reacting, scrolling.
We don’t have time to think.
To reflect.
To notice patterns.

A tired population is easy to manage.
A distracted population doesn’t hold anyone accountable.

But once people reclaim even one Sabbath, something changes.

You sit in synagogue.
Or church.
Or at a table.
Or on a bench.

You talk.
You listen.
You hear other people’s lives and opinions.
You observe your community.

And clarity returns.

That’s when things shift.
Not because of ideology.
Because of attention.

That’s why Dylan’s song still plays even if it’s ignored.
That’s why the question still hangs unanswered even if it’s the right questions to ask.
That’s why leaders who grew up hearing it somehow created such a mess of the world.

They never stopped long enough to let it change them.

Sabbath doesn’t answer the question.
It creates the conditions where the answer can finally be heard.

A Good Sabbath to you loyal reader and open a book, not your phone.

Eric