Be Nice to Someone This Year

This might be my last newsletter before all the holidays are over, as we have nearly a month of them coming up. I hope I’ll be able to squeeze in one newsletter in between, but if not, the next newsletter will likely be sometime in the second week of October.

Another traditional term for Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaDin, which means Day of Judgment. In the days leading up to Yom HaDin, we are called upon to do teshuva, to repent of our sins before we stand before God in judgment.

But how do you repent? What steps can you take to ensure that this year you will be a better person than you were last year?

For years, the answer to this question eluded me, until one day I heard an online lecture by a rabbi named Dovid Orlofsky. It was about two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, and the topic of his lecture addressed this very question: how to do teshuva. Orlofsky gave steps, and that’s perfect for me. I’m good at following step-by-step directions.

In the first step, he said to write down your eulogy. That might sound morbid, but that gives you your life’s goals. Suddenly, you’re thinking about life in a whole different way: What do I want people to think of me when I die? What will be my legacy?

So I did it, folks. I wrote down my eulogy. And I left it on the dresser in my room … and my kids found it. So now they know what to say about me at my funeral. Yikes!

One of the things I wrote that made my kids roll around on the floor laughing was the wish that at my funeral they would say, “We never heard our mother raise her voice.” Well, that ship had sailed years ago! And no one knew that better than my kids.

When I was very small, I would jump up and down when I got into a rage, which amused my father to no end.

“Ooh, ooh, do that little dance again,” he would say, which of course, took the wind out of my sails.

But I wrote that wish down because, as someone who had always struggled with my temper, I yearned to be one of those soft-spoken, calm people whose feathers were never ruffled.

So maybe those exact words can’t be said about me, but hey, now I had my goal.

Step two involves taking tiny baby steps toward that goal. Add one to three actions per day or week that you can easily incorporate into your life. The rabbi said that someone told him that he had tried following the steps but couldn’t stick to them. That’s because he took on too much, Orlofsky said. It’s gotta be doable.

For me, there was a turning point that made me decide what that first step would be. There was a terrible story in the news about a school shooting. I don’t remember which one; I just remember two horrible details. During the shooting, the children, who were middle school age, dropped their school bags as they fled. After the massacre, a reporter described the cell phones constantly ringing as parents frantically tried to reach children who would never pick up the phone again.

A meeting place had been designated by the school for parents to pick up their children. One set of parents met up with their child and waited for their other child to arrive. He never came.

I couldn’t get those images out of my mind.

All I could think about was, what if that happened at my children’s school, and my very last interaction with one of my kids forever and ever was me screaming at him or her about missing the school bus?

I made up my mind then and there that no matter what happened in the morning, I would be cheerful and calm. I would accept the possibility that my kids will miss the bus, no matter how inconvenient for me, and it will be okay. Nothing would be worth an angry send-off to school. I reminded myself that I only had to remain calm for the 45 minutes or so that it took to get the kids out the door. After that, I consoled myself, I could scream and yell all day completely unrestrained.

Then something wonderful happened. Forcing myself to deal calmly with stressful mornings strengthened my ability to handle stressful situations altogether. Don’t get me wrong — I still have a long way to go. When you work on a character flaw, I think you’re never really done. But I’ve also come a long way, and I’m proud of my progress.

Step three is to check in with yourself every day. It can be written or mental, as long as you’re consistent. This will help you chart your progress, or make adjustments if you’re not making any progress. For me, it’s asking myself, right before I lie down to go to sleep, how I did with the three or four small things I try to work on every day, and I assign myself a check, a check minus, or an X. Figure out a system that works for you and stick to it.

A couple of years ago, I started a new type of Rosh Hashanah resolution: Pick one person in my household and spend the following year being extra kind, by which I mean being extra vigilant to practice patience and speak gently no matter what they throw at me. I have to do a repeat for this year, because last year I chose the most challenging person in my family, and I lasted about a month before reverting to my old ways!

But I think it’s a great way to grow in your character while improving your relationship with someone. So this year, pick someone you interact with regularly and be kind to them. Practice patience and talk to them lovingly. Maybe it’s your anti-Zionist niece who just graduated college and thinks she knows everything. You don’t have to talk about politics; you can just listen and be kind. You can be curious and ask questions. Maybe your questions will plant seeds that will one day make her think.

Bear in mind that the person standing before you today might be a very different person in five years from now, and your kindness might have a hand in that. Leave the judgment to God.

Shana Tova and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life!