The Truth of It

The truth of it is this:  it is important to begin again.  It is important to sweep up our perceived trash, dust it off, and either carefully file it away or find a way to put it back into production.  This is how we begin again.  We must be diligent, find all we have forgotten, shuffled under the bed or hidden in other more clever places.

This is no easy task.  I don't like to look so closely at myself and my defects.  It ruins my vision of myself--that vision I am attempting to make the "real" version of me.

Worse than the task of self-inventory is the task of determining who was hurt and how to make amends.  It is one thing if I have trash in my own house; it is another if I have flung it into the corners of your house. 

After this big-clean-up and this making-of-amends, I like to see what I want to improve on for the next year--kind of like goal-setting.  This year, however, after the fantastic speaker who came to B'nai Amoona, I am instead going to make my "goal" the prayer I wrote in the exercise with the speaker.

This prayer, which is in a lot of ways is way too personal to share, really encompasses a vision of myself that I would prefer to be the everyday-real-version of me in particular situations.  I know that cannot make sense without you knowing my prayer and perhaps I will share it one day. 

The second half of this "goal" has to do with lashon hara.  I have written about this before but I am going to try once again to meaningfully practice this.  Don't get me wrong -- I think I do a better job at not engaging in lashon hara than most people I know.  However, sometimes I do not know how to step away from being in the middle of people who are doing it...and I find that a lot of people I know are back-stabbers, whether they are intending to be so or not.  So, I want to improve on myself in the capacity of not engaging in and also finding a way out when others are doing it.

I wish you all the best of luck in your personal inventory and amend-making as we approach the last days before Yom Kippur.