Yesterday, I stood at the edge of Manhattan on the banks of what the first people to live here called the great waters in constant motion. I held in my palm a handful of small pebbles. One at a time I pulled a pebble out of my palm, held it to my lips, breathed into it a “sin” that I carry, and - in an act of spiritual and symbolic release - threw it into the water. As I watched each pebble splash and sink into the choppy water, I took in a deep breath and imagined what it might actually feel like to live without the weight of that “sin” in my body.
The Jewish interpretation of sin as I understand it is simply a descriptor of the moments in which I am not showing up as my best self. The sins that I carry, that I am hoping to release myself from in this Rosh Hashanah ritual that I have inherited, are the times in this past year that I did not act from the place of my best self. My sins are the habits that block me from being my best self, and my hope in performing this ritual is that by naming those habits, by naming the moments that those habits showed up to block me from acting in the way that I aspire to act, I will be able to build up the muscles required to override those habits and decrease the times that they block me from showing up in alignment with my values and the way of being to which I aspire.
And while this particular ritual is about what I want to let go of, what I want to release, the other side of it is to think about what it is that I am reaching towards, who it is that I aspire to be, how it is that I aspire to act.
For me, the question of my aspirational self begins (and quite possibly ends) with the question of my core values and what it looks and feels like to make those values manifest in my actions, in the ways that I show up to myself, my relationships, and the situations I find myself in.
The self to which I aspire is clear and calm, kind to himself and others, steady in action and presence, joyful and open with the love he has to share. The self to which I aspire centers his ability to imagine beyond what feels possible, accepts the truth of how little he can control, and embraces paradox as the only way to understand reality. The self to which I aspire has the courage to confront the chaos and uncertainty of the world, face the moments of tension and conflict that show up in his life, and take accountability for the moments he does not live up to these aspirations.