Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, alav HaShalom, told this story:
Once there was a man who was very forgetful. When he woke up in
the morning, he could never remember where he had put his things the night
before. One night, he worked out a plan. He took a pencil and a pad, and as he
got undressed, he wrote down exactly where he put his clothes. Then, the next
morning, when he woke up, he took the piece of paper and read the list. “My cap
is on the dresser,” He went over to the dresser, and sure enough, there it was.
So he put it on, and made a check-mark on the pad of paper. Then he looked at
the paper again. It said, "My pants are on the chair," and so he went
to the chair, and there they were. Then he looked at the paper again, and it
said, "My shirt is on the table," so he went to the table, and there
it was. And so it went until he was fully dressed, at which point he said,
"This is fine . . . but where am I?" He looked and he looked, but he
could not find himself.
When you
come right down to it, that is why we’re here tonight. To reflect on where we are, who we are, why
we are the way we are, and what we hope to do to turn around any of the
discoveries we make about ourselves that are not to our liking. Of course we
often get feedback from our friends, and family members to let us know what
needs fixing, but hearing those comments can often lead to defensive responses
since we might feel like we are under attack. It is more important for us to
think about our own actions and the way we effect others.
Perhaps
you’ve heard the story about Alfred Noble. Alfred
Nobel, actually won his fortune as the inventor of dynamite. When his brother
died, a Swiss newspaper made an error and printed the obituary for the wrong brother,
using information that was already on file. It started out, "Alfred Nobel,
who invented a way to kill more people faster than anyone in history, died
yesterday a wealthy man." When Nobel read that report, he said,
"That's not how I want to be remembered." With that, he established
the Nobel prizes in various fields and devoted his entire fortune to funding
them. Today, everybody associates him with the prizes celebrating the
betterment of humanity and scarcely anyone remembers him as the inventor of
dynamite.
Hearing what individuals would
have said about him had he died at that moment, led Alfred Nobel to change his
life. It gave him an opportunity to
focus on activities and deeds by which he really would want others to remember
him. He had a wake up call and he
responded to it.
Our wake up call was on Rosh
HaShanah when we heard the shofar blown.
We’ve now had ten days to reflect upon what we believe are the critical
changes we need to make in our lives.
Rabbi Richard Plavin suggests that we not worry about trying to create
lives of fame and fortune, rather lives that are reflective of earning moral
gold medals!
We all have times where we
avoid saying a kind word, or visiting someone who is ill, or donating to a
tzedakah fund. We tell ourselves that
we’ll do it “tomorrow.” Life will be
less busy tomorrow. We’ll have more time
tomorrow. Rabbi Sydney Greenberg said it
most poignantly when he wrote:
We wait too long to do what must be done today, in a world which gives us only one day at a
time, without any assurance of tomorrow. We frequently lament that our days are
so few; and yet, we procrastinate as though we had an endless supply of time.
We wait too long to show kindness. And often we thereby lose the
opportunity. How many lines of thanks or encouragement are waiting for us to be
written? How many words of solace are waiting for us to be spoken?
We wait too long to be charitable. Too much of our giving is
delayed until much of the need has passed and the joy of giving has been
largely diminished.
We wait too long to speak the words of forgiveness which should
be spoken, to set aside the hatreds that should be banished.
We wait too long to discipline ourselves and to take charge of
our lives. We feed ourselves the vain delusion that it will be easier to uproot
tomorrow the debasing habits which we permit to tyrannize over us today, whose
command over us grows more deeply entrenched each day they remain in power.
We wait too long to be parents to our children forgetting how
brief is the time during which they are children, how swiftly life urges them
on and away.
We wait too long to read the books that are waiting to be read,
to see the beauty which is here to be seen, to hear the music which is here to
be heard, to seek repentance which is within reach, to utter the prayers which
are waiting to cross our lips, to perform the duties waiting to be discharged,
to show the love that may no longer be needed tomorrow.
We wait too long in the wings, when life has a part for us to
play on stage.
Let’s listen to these words and think about their implication as
it applies to our own life. Let’s think
about ways we can involve ourselves today and every day in the needs of our
families, Jewish community, and general community. We have so many wonderful role models right
among us, for whom we could say amazing words of tribute were this to be their
last day on earth. Let us join them in
re-designing our lives in a way that if we are asked AYEKA?Where are you? In an
existential sense that we can answer HINENI, I am here…in the full sense of the
word!
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