What Matters to You?

There's a book called "The Seven Questions You're Asked in Heaven."
If I didn't know better, I might have thought at a first glance that
it was written for religious Christians. However, I know the author,
former Omahan, Dr. Ron Wolfson, who is currently a professor of
education at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. His book
is intended to carry on a tradition first discussed in the Babylonian
Talmud, in which Rava, Rabbi Abba ben Yosef Bar Hama, posed six
questions which he believed G-d would ask us after death. The purpose
of posing the questions is to help us realize that there will be an
"ultimate accounting of the soul"..a chesbon ha nefesh...which will
have us account for the way we have acted during our lifetime.

In the book, Wolfson suggests that the fifth question that we will be
asked is "What matters to you? Did you prioritize your time so it
truly reflected what was on your priority list? Did you get your
priorities straight?" As we face a time of economic uncertainty, many
of us make work our priority. Holding onto a job often requires
making sure that our employers realize that they cannot possibly
manage without us or would not want to manage without us. The best
way to figure out what one's priorities are is to look at one's
schedule. Is it filled only with work, only with an emphasis on
taking care of one's self, or is it filled with time for study, time
for volunteering,and time for family and friends? At times we might
feel as if we have little control over the choices that we make. But
the purpose of an accounting of the soul (which by the way does not
have to wait until one dies) is to analyze how one chooses to live
his/her life. The way we live should reflect our true values.

Wolfson suggests that we should think about whether the majority of
our time is spent on the things that we say matter the most to us. If
we actually do spend time doing the things that matter the most to us,
relating to the people that we care about the most, then we will find
that we are living a life that matters. I know that years ago, when
both of my parents were alive but not well enough to care for
themselves, I decided that I wanted to provide them the kind of
support that they had offered me as a child. It's true that the
care-taking often brought about feelings of tiredness and frustration,
but it also brought a sense of meaning to be able to express my love
through actions that were helpful.

We often take time to do an accounting of our actions during the High
Holydays. The wonderful thing about Judaism is that it does not
require such reflection only once a year. It requires us to think
about our actions and the way we spend our time each and every day.
Figuring out how to live one's life is part and parcel of Judaism.
That is why we have guidelines provided in Torah for how we are to act
and a calendar that is designed to make us cognizant of what really
matters in life. Even with all of this help, it is not an easy task
to set our priorities and make sure that we strive to live by them.
Perhaps the easiest way to help ourselves accomplish this goal is to
think about how we would feel if we had to answer the question, "What
mattered to you and did you live your life accordingly?" today!

Shabbat Shalom.