Tonight began the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – Yom Kippur – The Day of Attonement. Throughout my life I always remember dreading this day more than any other of the Jewish high holidays. Mainly I guess because it’s comes attached with it the notion of being “holiest” – something that kind of scared – and it entailed spending a day sitting around bathing in a years worth of guilt in a formal setting while not eating. But for some reason this year it dawned on me that Yom Kippur actually is kind of awesome. Because in actuality Yom Kippur is a cleansing…A chance to reflect and purge all the wrongs, sins, misdoings of the past year and start clean slate fresh.
While reflecting on the past year – a year where I actually did essentially start fresh with my move to New Haven – I thought about the new and old relationships, both internal and external, their growths, progressions and in some cases their demises. And it dawned on me what exactly it is that sets humankind apart from all else. It is the constant struggle between instinct and intellect – choosing not to do what we are intrinsically compulsed to do in favor of what we have been taught is the right thing to do. Today we remind ourselves that we aim to be masters, not servants to our instincts via the use of our intellect. I’ve now been living here in New Haven for over a year and there are more examples now then ever before of how difficult it can be to find balance between these two forces…and how living happily and healthily as we like to say at the start of New Years is completely dependent on it.
So I’ve had some time to live, complain, make poor decisions in this past year. And now it’s time for some of that to change. For me to take the reigns so to speak and start making this year a better one than the last. I’ve made some awful decisions when it’s come to my family, my academic performance and the relationships I’ve choosen to pursue (just to name a few). And I would like to say I honestly will make a covenant between me and myself to improve upon all these aspects of my life.
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