To a "Wonderful" Year

Our New Year is a prescribed time for introspection and self-reflection. For many of us, it is a good reminder – then again there are many people who think I spend too much time doing that, so at the risk of reinforcing their point of view, I share some thoughts as we approach Rosh Hashanah.

During these Holy Days, hours are spent in synagogue, ostensibly in prayer, and there are (at least) a couple of fundamental questions many people contemplate: 

• To whom (or what) are we praying?  
• For what are we praying?

That first question can lead in many directions. For some of us, the answer seems simple, i.e., we pray to God, but even how that is defined is anything but simple. For others it can be much more confusing. I’m not advocating a position – this is about contemplation, not answers – but I do think that everyone could agree there are things that we can neither control nor explain. And even if we think it is all completely random, maybe call it “nature”, we can pray, or perhaps hope (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes beautifully about the difference between hope and optimism…hope is much more active in his view) that we are positively impacted by those forces, or that we are not negatively impacted by them.

What about the second question? A couple of years ago, I thought about this a lot when a dear friend’s Mom was in the last stages of a battle with the disease that ultimately took her life. As I approached my friend before the Holidays, I was confused about what to say. Happy New Year? It was surely not starting off that way. I finally decided that I would confess my confusion and simply share my feeling that ultimately the best any of us can pray – or hope – for is peace. How we, or the people we love, find peace may differ, but we can all strive for it.

Another thought: I find myself increasingly feeling the need for balance, and decreasingly believing in absolutes or extremes. Somehow the world seems much more nuanced and a lot less black and white. I could go on at length about where and how the importance of maintaining balance applies, but it varies for each of us. So perhaps we pray for the right balance in the things that are important to us…which forces us to first consider what is most important to us.

A parting thought that just occurred to me as I was thinking about this topic: I have been blessed with an amazing role model, a woman who even well in to her 80’s keeps on trying and experiencing new things. My Mom, who is a survivor in every sense of that word, has always remained curious and interested in expanding her horizons and I cannot imagine living my life any other way. In fact, without ever really consciously considering this, I believe it has influenced my own outlook as a parent. So, perhaps we pray to maintain our sense of curiosity and our desire to learn and experience new things.

This in turn led to me to a “chiddush” – a term I learned as a child to describe a new Rabbinic discovery, often concerning a subject that already had been studied and analyzed extensively. 

The word wonder has a variety of uses and definitions.  As a verb, it means to speculate, to question, to ponder...in other words, to be curious. However, as a noun it is defined as a miracle (there’s a word that could use some explanation!), a marvel, a phenomenon. When something is a wonder we view it with awe, with amazement, with admiration. And finally when used as an adjective, i.e., wonderful, it means delightful or magnificent. The act of being curious leads to such great things!

I close with my special wish for each of us to have a wonderful New Year, a year full of wonder.