Skip to main content

Third time's the charm

It's day three of the month. That would be of the month of Elul, the Jewish month prior to the New Year and Day of Atonement. This should be a time of contemplation and reflection on the past year and looking forward.

I've never really cued into this month particularly well. Typically it starts as the summer vacation is ending and then with all the rush into the school year, BOOM!, we're at Rosh Hashanah and that opportunity to take Elul and contemplate is gone.

Not this year, the holidays are late - as opposed to early, they are never on time! So the kids started school and then it was the start of Elul and I noticed this year. I paid attention to my kids needing to wear white shirts to school to mark the start of the month.

And yet, I am already finding the month slipping past me and having to work harder and harder to remember before I head to bed to put my fingers to the keys and stop and think and share.

I didn't set out announcing that I hoped to mark the month of Elul with an attempt to restart this blog effort. A while back I heard news that when a person announces plans to do something instead of helping ensure that it happens it actually leads to the person failing to accomplish her goal out of the fear of failure in such a public way, ironic indeed.

This world of ours, no matter where you live, just spins so fast with so much to do, see, experience, feel, taste, hear, observe, and share. Stopping to do less seems like a failure, an opting out. But I think that when we do slow down just a bit to make more informed decisions and choices we make better, more meaningful ones. Those are the experiences that stay with us and help mold the people we become.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Macher or Schmoozer?

I'm working my way slowly through the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam . In a nutshell, which has to be pretty big because it's a hefty book, it's about social behaviors and the decline of them in the US - things like voting and participating in the political process at all levels, and engaging with volunteer and community efforts. Chapter six looks at Informal Social Connections. At paragraph two of the chapter he mentions the Yiddish words macher and schmoozer . That stopped me in my tracks for a moment. He continued to explain that fundamentally a macher is a doer, someone who makes things happen in the community. Whereas a schmoozer is a talker, a person with an active social life, someone who focuses on informal connections to others. And while it is certainly nice to sit and talk with someone, at the end of the day that's all a schmoozer does. Alternatively, the macher will sit and visit with you and then either your roped into helping or the macher...
Post a Comment
Read more

Safe Responsibility

Having already established that the better choice in life is to take responsibility over placing blame - at least if we want to build relationships - the next step is to figure out how to both muster the courage to take responsibility and also build safe environments to allow others to take responsibility. It strikes me, based on a sample size of 3 children, that the fear of consequences is one of the major, if not THE major, hindrance to taking responsibility for our actions. When we don't know how others will respond to our confession, our admission of responsibility, it makes taking that step even harder. Interestingly, in the Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services there are a number of times we recite the Vidui (confessional) prayer. It's almost poem like in our alphabetical recitation of our sins and it is done in the communal form - using plural language. We all stand together and out loud list these sins. Obviously the intent is not that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Family...oy, family

We all come from a family, whether we belong to a family or not at the moment. By family, I mean there are people with whom you are closely, genetically related. I'm tackling a new project this week that involves making a number of phone calls. It's been fun and rewarding so far. Interestingly tonight as I made a few of the phone calls I was struck by some family connected-ness that I encountered. One call was to an old, dear friend. Our lives seem to keep crossing paths in a fairly informal kind of way - enough to keep our friendship alive but not necessarily deepen it or harm it, either. After some time living in other parts of the US she moved back to where she grew up and has sunk down deep roots. I was struck as we finished our chat about how nice that must be for her to be in a place so close to her family. Her family bonds remain strong so when a major family event happens they all gather, even if they all aren't in the same town. It's remarkable, really. A...
Post a Comment
Read more