Like Packing for a Trip

Preparing for a new year is like packing for a trip. We begin by amassing all the bits and bobs that we think are essential for our journeys. Subsequent to eyeballing our luggage, however, we tend to put back many possessions, acknowledging all the while that skirts can be worn for two consecutive days and that we really don’t need to bring along five sets of shoes.

Sure, we employ hacks such as rolling clothing, filling packing cubes, and wadding jewelry, socks, and cosmetics into shoes to maximize available spatial resources, yet we often find ourselves sitting on our trunks or else using force to make sure that they latches. Almost always, in retrospect, we gather that we hadn’t needed everything among our downsized goods.

Regardless, once we try to load our sedans, or arrive at airports, it’s regularly the state of affairs that we find that our overfilled suitcases are also overweigh. Our efforts to squish edited collections of our objects into our gear get thwarted. Either we must discard more things, locate or buy supplementary gripsacks, or pay a fine in muscle strain or money for our provisioning.

In the same way, a new year challenges us to condense our desires for our future into manageable asks. We have learned to reshelve many of our aspirations, i.e., to shrink our ambitions. Hashem’s storehouse of blessings might be infinite, but our ability to provide the crucial histadlut to receive them is limited.

What’s more, nearly all the time, we discover that we didn’t really require everything on our downscaled list of requests. We didn’t need the dreamed for titles, wealth, or beauty. We didn’t need our lives to be perfect. More exactly, if we were suddenly to lack our flaws, we might not stretch as recurrently and as intensely toward Hakodesh Baruch Hu and we might not attempt to reconcile our relationships.

Additionally, even if we thought we had properly adjusted our assemblages of expectations, we’d repeatedly realize that we overreached. Whereas The Abishter’s energies are boundless, ours are not. It’s nice to retain high hopes. Nonetheless, it’s heartening to enjoy modest ones.

Further, when traveling, time and again, the unanticipated can and does occur. On the one hand, rigs go missing, food poisoning happens, pickpocketing, too, is frequently experienced, etcetera. On the other hand, dolphins have been known to gift tourists with starfish, some persons find “true love” when exploring museums, ascending peaks, or waiting in hotel lobbies, and the majority of us feel reinvigorated when returning from our explorations.

Analogously, during a fresh year, we customarily have surprising challenges as well as unforeseen delights. In the first instance, we might, has v’shalom, undergo unpredicted health crises, financial losses, spiritual setbacks, or war. In the second instance, we might, IYH, live through the birth of a new generation in our families, unearth promising employment, become spiritually elevated, or become encompassed by peace (Moshiach is on his way.)

Once we’ve completed our travels, we unpack the same valises into which we’d earlier squeezed our stuffs. We might have had to discard effects along the way to make room for souvenirs or for other niceties that are not usually available to us. We might also have had items explode or else break in our travel bags, and, in turn, ruin others of our cherished movables. Similarly, we might have had our luggage lost en route home.

Identically, during a brand-new year, we assess our progress by deconstructing our intentions. Maybe, after passing through a few months, we’ve chosen to abandon select principles to create space for higher living or to replace the importance we once granted some thoughts, words, and deeds. It’s common for us to be astounded by the deterioration of certain facets of our inner lives and by the way that such depreciation also influences the devaluation of other factors. Sadly, it’s correspondingly true that through death or other tremendous losses, there are occasions when an unmarked year empties us.

In hindsight, the frustrations concommitant to packing and the risk of forfeiture that’s part of travel rarely deter us from expanding our horizons. The decreased stress plus improved creativity and confidence that usually results from trekking outweigh expedition’s’ possible shortfalls.

Likewise, it’s rare to identify individuals whose misgivings about trying to make the most of their lives, during a future year, keep them from endeavoring to right wrongs or to otherwise tweak themselves. Every day that’s allowed to us in Olam HaZeh is an incalculable boon. Not only does a new start empower us to better our physical and mental health, to get closer to The Boss, and to live in greater concord with our dear ones, but every day that’s allowed to us in Olam HaZeh is, at the same time, an excursion to a potentially wonderful “place” from which we can cull the most amazing involvements.

Shana Tova!