How different am I this week than I was the week before?
The chameleon has it relatively easy. Spending not too much energy, he gets a whole new look and adapts well to his environment. The visible outer change is prompted by a detailed inner process. We can learn from that.
Every week, I meditate a bit with a kavannah (stated intention) before ushering in Shabbat's glowing candlelight. It is a brief glimmer of time to check in with myself. Did I progress this week? Was I kinder? More giving? More attentive to loved ones? Did I procrastinate less? Did I do what I set out to do? Did I change?
Sometimes the answer gives me a sickened regret for time not well spent. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov minces no words when he says:
If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for tomorrow?
Thankfully, I will get another chance. As I usher in Shabbat, I focus on the beautiful teaching that all that was unfinished from the week is considered complete, the culmination. So, I get a reprieve. I get to pretend for a full 25 hours that all is as it should be. I love that teaching.
In a few days, we will welcome the secular New Year 2021 with arms wide open, ready to put 2020 to bed. On countless fronts, the year has been incredibly challenging. The only thing left for us to think about is how, in 20/20 our eyesight/awareness might have changed for the better. And we can be grateful for that.
So, the same contrivance that works so well on a weekly basis--thinking that all is well and complete just doesn't hold true for almost an entire year.
This sounds crazy, but for this reason I find myself oddly hanging on to 2020 a bit, like a person who is not quite ready to let go of the lifeboat in order to climb aboard the rescue ship. What? Have I totally lost it? I am being saved, why am I languishing around?
It comes down to not being quite sure that I actually did enough of what is truly important in 2020.
Despite all the zooming, tik-tok'ing, cooking, baking and cleaning---I am not sure that I journaled enough, prayed enough, talked to God enough.
I am not sure that I cleaned enough of my own soul's 'shmutz' (Yiddish for dirt, rhymes with "puts") that tends to block my inner being.
For me, being on a path of growth means just that...being committed to going from one place to another. And I have to leave the old place in order to start anew.
It is in our tradition, we are a people who leave places to start again in new ones. We have thousands of years of journeying in our Jewish DNA, beginning with Abraham and continuing on in almost every story in Genesis...we leave and finally arrive.
It's been our history, chased out by pogroms, massacres, Inquisitions, death marches. We begin again.
So, I will begin again. I will get into the rescue ship, glad to leave 2020 behind, committed to undergoing chameleon-like change in the year ahead.
Starting with my inner soul, hoping that my outer behavior will be a reflection of my new colors.