What day is it?

What’s in a week? Maybe it’s a question you have not thought much about before. But as the outer circumstances that give structure to the week like work and school schedules have been upended in recent months, perhaps you have felt disorientated or out of balance – a feeling of being lost in time. When week after week is disrupted in this way, we can begin to feel that our life in general is being affected. How is the concept of  a week connected to life as a whole?

The week is the most basic rhythm of social life, and each of the seven days has a unique quality. A Monday is definitely not a Saturday. Why is that? While each of us has our own sense of the days based on our life experiences, the days of the week also have certain archetypal qualities. For millenia, their names and…