Happy 2022! As we enter a new month and a new secular year this week, let’s take a look at some of the more “popular” New Year’s Resolutions….and see what our tradition might have to teach us.
Live life to the fullest.
Our tradition has much to say about time and our usage of it. Perhaps the best known is from the Book of Ecclesiastes, read on Sukkot and made famous by The Byrds:
לַכֹּ֖ל זְמָ֑ן וְעֵ֥ת לְכׇל־חֵ֖פֶץ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּׁמָֽיִם
There is a time for everything, a season for every experience under heaven. We will, the text teaches, have time to live and time to die, time to sow and time to reap, time to weep and time to laugh. The poet Yehuda Amichai, though, presents what might be a more realistic way of seeing our world—and our lives:
A person doesn’t have time in their life
to have time for everything. They don’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A person needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them…
Like yesterday’s resolution, we cannot live life to the fullest if we are waiting for the perfect time, or the right moment, to do the things that bring us joy, make meaning, and create memories and legacies. We need to do those things when we have the opportunity—or when we make it. We need to do those things even when—or maybe especially when—we are faced with challenges. We need to do those things despite when—or maybe because—they seem like the hardest things to prioritize.
Perhaps, when it comes to living life to the fullest, the answer is somewhere between Ecclesiastes and Amichai. Perhaps there is time for everything, but not a distinct time. Perhaps there is time for everything, but only if we make it.
— Rabbi Sari Laufer