Yom Kippur Musings

As always, Yom Kippur, for me was a day of introspection and soul searching. I couldn’t help but get depressed about life. Where was I going? What did I accomplish? What will beck of me? What if he whole world blows up? What is death like?
I’m afraid.
I seek answers and yet sometimes I feel like I can’t even formulate the question….
Well, Hashem must have heard my silent cry because I opened up Rabbi Tatz’s book on “Livinng Inspired.” I came across a beautiful peice that has really enlightened me and gave me the inspiration to keep going.
When Yakov bentched his sons at the end of his life, he wanted to tell them the history of the world. In so doing, he would reveal the timing of Moshiach. “It would be very shallow for us to think that all Yakov wanted to do was tell his children a mere DATE in the calendar. He attempted to tell them the PROCESS through which Moshiach will come.”
Which means, that everything in this world has to get to a specific destination. There is a mission and accomplishment that each person, place or thing has to get to. The process that can get a person there is going to be different for everyone. And even more than that! The process is MORE IMPORTANT than the RESULT. Because just by virtue of going through that process you will ultimately get to the result. You don’t even have to work on the outcome – it will just HAPPEN!
An example that comes to mind is baking a cake. You have the eggs, sugar, flour…. You need to mix it all together. You need to put in the exact measurements. You need to do the work. And then…… You need to put it in the oven and wait….. And wait…. And wait…… Until they are READY. And only AFTER we taste the cake will we understand why the recipes called for lemons. Or baking soda. Or avocado ;-)
We need to go through the process of Galus, because there’s a purpose and reasoning behind it. We need to believe that while we wait the cake is baking. There is work that we need to do.
We may want to just eat the cake already, but we haven’t finished the recipe!
Another example that comes to mind is the process of raising a child. We don’t see the results right away, but what you put in is EXaCTLY what you will get out! There is lots of work involved in raising a child. There is physical, emotional, spiritual, mental….. And sometimes you don’t even have to DO anything for the child.
You just have to BE.
And very slowly the child progresses.
This was my inspiration this Yom Kippur. It was about being patient for the end.
It’s about doing the work even though I may not understand it.
Its about allowing the beautiful threads of history weave together so we can have a magnificent tapestry.