If one were able to survey at a glance all he has done in the course of a life, what would he feel? He would be terrified at the extent of his own power. Said Abraham Joshua Heschel.
These days of Elul were made to make us challenge our comfort zone, face what we need to fix in our lives to live them better next year. Whatever the modern definition of sin is – it’s always about somehow missing the mark. But before the next prepent phase with honest looking in the mirror to face our demons and demands for change – here’s one last chance to harvest our best intentions, noble actions, and self love. Self judgement can wait one more day.
selfless kindness to others, compassion, generosity of spirit, overcoming a shortcoming, learning from a mistake and not repeating it, going out of my way to ease the lives of others, stuff like that.
Keep it private, list one or three such moments. Save them for the day of judgement when the scales are weighed and ideally the transgressions are lesser than the good deeds, and hopefully the judges also take into consideration our best intentions, sincere regret and seriousness to keep raising our own bar of kindness.
