October 2015

 When I was eleven or twelve years old I found a box. It was the box to a set of camping dishes that I vaguely remember using one time on a camping trip with my family. But when I came upon the box it was empty and collecting dust in my closet. I used it to put things in, things that I didn’t necessarily have any use for but also wasn’t quite ready to get rid of. A couple times a year, when I cleaned out my room and reassessed all of my possessions, I would find this box, look inside it and spend hours with the memories each of the objects stirred. Occasionally, I would realize that a certain object no longer held emotional value and I would get rid of it. More frequently I would add new items that I no longer had use for but was not quite ready to part with. The box was becoming my own little time capsule, an archive of my material life.

A year or two into this haphazard practice one of my cleaning and reassessing binges happened to fall on Yom Kippur.

My family never really found our religion in synagogue. I had, at that point, had my Bar Mitzvah and been to services a few times but being in synagogue mostly made me feel alienated from my Judaism, not connected to it. Connection to Judaism came from being with my family, listening to the stories of my grandparents, celebrating Passover or having a Shabbat dinner with my family and our small community of friends, learning Jewish stories through arts and crafts and theater projects, and exploring the legends and wisdom in Judaism that I could make meaningful in my own life.

And so on this particular Yom Kippur, when I had decided I didn’t want to go to synagogue, I found myself sitting in my room trying to find something meaningful to do instead. Yom Kippur is a big deal holiday. It is the day of Atonement, the day you are supposed to atone for all of your sins of the past year – to make up for all of the times in the year that you didn’t act as your best self. It is the day that the Book of Judgment gets closed and your fate is sealed for the entire year. It’s a lot of pressure to put on one day, especially when you’ve decided to forgo the traditional practice of sitting in synagogue to try and do something that you will find more meaningful. So it was probably in the spirit of procrastination that I began to clean my room when I came upon my box. And there it was, a ready made practice that perfectly met the spirit of the day. From that point on, I decided, I would only look in the box on Yom Kippur and I would use the day to reflect on all of the things in my life and determine what had meaning and what I was ready to let go of. That practice lasted a couple of years but by the middle of high school it has lost its momentum and faded away.

A few days before Yom Kippur during my junior year of college a friend invited me to services that she was going to. I was definitely feeling the need to do something to mark the holiday but I also knew that going to services at a synagogue or a campus Hillel would only make me feel more alienated than I already was. Things in my life were going great but I was very much missing home and my community and needed something that would make me feel more connected to them, to myself, to my life. I thought about my box. I had no idea what was in it anymore. It had been at least three years since I last looked inside. It was, I was sure, still collecting dust in my closet at home.

And then I thought about the Book of Judgement. The idea that there is a gigantic book that this god character spends ten days a year writing everyone’s fate in is a little preposterous, I thought. But then I thought more and realized that there was something in the spirit of this idea that I found profoundly interesting, even inspiring. How wonderful to have your life recorded. How poetic to have your fate revisited every year. Somewhere inside all of the melancholy atonement of sin and the fearful pressure of judgement there was a beautiful idea, that there was a time during the year to step back, revisit your actions, reflect on them and determine which of them you felt proud of and which you would like to throw away. The idea that we, as people, can look at ourselves and decide which version of ourselves we want to be and which versions of ourselves we do not want to take with us any longer. It is a hopeful idea, an idea that asks the best parts of us to step up and take control over our lives.

But I was still hung up on the notion of this god character sitting up in the sky and writing in a book. I didn’t want that character judging me so I decided that I would write my own fate. Or I would at least spend the day writing, some good reflective writing always made me feel better and more connected to myself anyway. And that is what I did. I found a nice park by the water and spent my day fasting and writing. I don’t remember what I wrote that year. Years later I searched through my college notebooks to try to find it but I never could. At the time I had no idea I was starting a tradition that would continue throughout my entire adult life.

The next year at Yom Kippur I decided to spend the day writing again. Once again, I found a nice spot outside, by the water, fasted and wrote. This time I began my reflection by comparing where I was at the time to where I had been a year ago. I then traced the path I had taken over the past year to get from where I had been to where I then was. As it was the beginning of my last semester of college, I definitely had the future on my brain so I also added, at the end, a paragraph with my aspirations for what my life would look like in the coming year.

When Yom Kippur came around the following year, there was no question what I was going to do. I went to find a place in nature, I fasted and I wrote a reflection of my year, tracing my movements through time and space, lingering on themes and questions that arose and became a frame to the story of the year. Again before closing, I set out some aspirations for the year to come.

It was the fourth year that this practice became solidified as a tradition. Leading up to Yom Kippur, I bought a new notebook. I spent the morning of the holiday transcribing the two prior year’s posts into this new book, leaving the first few pages empty in case I were to ever find that first year’s writing. In the afternoon I wrote the past year’s reflection and the coming year’s aspirations.

This practice has been my tradition for the past seventeen years. During the days leading up to Yom Kippur, I take my books (there are now multiple books because I filled up the first one) out from their sealed case and begin reading the story of my adult life. Then on Yom Kippur, I go find a beautiful place in nature (always a different place), I fast and I spend the day writing a reflection on my year, tracing my movements through space and time, exploring themes and questions that framed the past year, noticing recurring themes, referencing patterns I recognize from previous years of my life and, finally, setting aspirations for the year to come. I then sign the bottom of the entry, close the book and seal it back in it’s case, not to be opened until the following year.

This tradition has been the single most grounding and stabilizing force of my adult life. By spending a day each year reading the story of my life I have a set time to check back in with myself, make sure that I am not getting too lost, straying too far from my core values, my core vision, my core understanding of who I am and who I want to be in the world. And at the same time, knowing that I will have a time each year to check back in with that core self allows me to stray just far enough, to get just lost enough. It gives me the freedom to dive into something fully without having to fear that I could lose myself completely. By having a book where I am the author of my own life story I have a space to trace the journey of my life, to see who I was, to reflect on who I am, to imagine who I will be and to recognize them all as the same person.

As I write this, we are in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days that the book of Judgement is open, the days that we Jews are meant to be thinking about our actions, about who we are in the world, about who we want to be. In the coming days I will begin the process of reading the story I have been writing to myself about my life. On Tuesday, just before the sun goes down, I will begin my fast. I will spend the evening reading last year’s entry and fall asleep thinking about where I was a year ago. On Wednesday I will wake up and spend the day writing a reflection on this last year of my life. I will trace the path of my journey. I will dwell in meaningful moments, explore the themes and questions that shaped this last year. I will laugh. I will cry. I will confront the moments in which I was not my best self. I will forgive myself for those shortcomings. I will commit to learning from the mistakes I made and the hurt I caused, both to myself and to others. I will then set aspirations for this coming year, sign the entry and return the books to their sealed case where they will remain until next year.

Note: If you think you might want to do some kind of similar practice I strongly encourage it. If Yom Kippur is not in your tradition, I would suggest a birthday as a potentially similar reflective time to engage in this kind of ritual.