Willpower is for losers
Friday afternoon is a hectic time in any frum household. As the sunset deadline looms, pressure mounts to get all the Shabbos preparation done in time. Children must be cleaned and dressed, muktzeh must be put away, supper cooking time must be carefully co-ordinated before leaving the house, time-switches must be set up, alarms deactivated, and all the details that guard and honour the Shabbos Queen seen to. Yet for two weeks out of the past three the streets of Victory Park have seen me jogging around the block for precisely thirty minutes as the sun touches the treetops. I can handle the exercise, but it normally takes a perfect confluence of factors to get me to put on my running shoes. The weather has to be just right, I have to be in perfect health, nobody must need me for the next hour or so, and I have to magically achieve that rare state of enthusiasm for physical effort. How did it happen that I came to be sweating on a Friday afternoon when there were so many more urgent...