There Is Still Time Today to Make Yesterday Jealous

It was an ordinary ride that delivered an extraordinary idea.

Earlier this week, in Washington, D.C., I stepped into an Uber driven by a retired gentleman with a calm demeanor. Soft religious music played in the background. He greeted me the way certain people do — warmly, unhurriedly, as if he carried quiet purpose into even the smallest interactions. The ride itself was unremarkable. What has stayed with me is what he said as I got in, and again as I got out:

There is still time today to make yesterday jealous.

In a world saturated with noise, anxiety, and uncertainty, that one sentence felt almost radical.

The Weight of Yesterday

We are living through a season when the past presses hard on the present. For Israelis, the last year has meant war, loss, and an uncertainty that refuses to lift, compounded for many families by real economic strain. For Jews around the world, rising antisemitism and deepening social division have created a persistent, low-grade unease that rarely gets to rest. And beneath the headlines, in ordinary lives, people are carrying private weight of their own — illness, family rupture, opportunities that closed and never reopened.

It is easy, under all of that, to feel defined by what has already happened. To feel that yesterday has the final word.

Jewish tradition has never accepted that conclusion.

Teshuvah: Not a Season, a Practice

The concept of teshuvah — return, renewal, the capacity to become someone slightly different than you were — is not confined to the High Holidays. It is woven into daily life. Maimonides teaches that a person is not defined by their past; they are defined by the choice standing in front of them right now.

The Talmud, in the tractate of Yoma (86a–b), takes this even further. It teaches that when teshuvah is driven by love rather than fear alone, a person’s intentional wrongs are not merely forgiven — they are transformed into merits.

Sit with that for a moment. The mistakes, the pain, the missteps of the past are not simply erased. They are converted — repurposed into fuel for what comes next. That is precisely why yesterday grows jealous: it watches its own failures become the raw material for something better than it ever was.

Yesterday does not own us. Today does.

“This Is the Day”

King David understood this centuries before anyone needed to name it. In Psalms he writes: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Not yesterday’s disappointments. Not tomorrow’s uncertainties. Today.

This is not naïve optimism dressed up in scripture. It is disciplined resilience — the sober recognition that while we cannot erase what has been, we are not obligated to repeat it.

My dear father used to say, “Where there is life, there is hope.” Jewish history is the living proof of that sentence. From exile to return. From destruction to rebuilding. Ours has never been a story of surrender to what came before — it is a story of refusing to let history dictate destiny. The modern State of Israel itself, rising from the ashes of yesterday while navigating extraordinary challenges today, is that same refusal, made national, made real.

The Brain Agrees With the Talmud

Here is something remarkable: modern neuroscience backs this up almost word for word.

For most of the twentieth century, scientists believed the adult brain was essentially fixed — that whatever wiring you had by adulthood was the wiring you were stuck with. That assumption has been overturned. Brain imaging and decades of research now show that the adult brain continues to change its own structure in response to what a person does, thinks, and practices, a phenomenon neuroscientists call neuroplasticity. Adults can grow new connections between neurons and reorganize existing circuits well into old age, especially when they engage in something mentally demanding or unfamiliar.

In plain terms: every time you choose to act differently — to respond with patience instead of anger, to show up instead of withdraw, to begin again instead of give up — your brain is not just “trying to be better.” It is physically rewiring itself around that choice. The old pattern doesn’t just fade from memory; a new, competing pathway is built in its place, one small repetition at a time.

That is teshuvah in a lab coat. The sages taught that a person is not defined by their past, only by the decision in front of them right now — and it turns out the brain takes that teaching literally. Today’s choice is not merely a feeling of renewal. It is measurable, physical renewal, cell by cell.

Yesterday, in other words, isn’t just spiritually outmatched. It’s outmatched biologically. The brain you have tomorrow is being built by what you choose today.

Why This Matters Right Now

This perspective is not abstract theology. It is urgent, practical medicine for a moment when anxiety and despair have become common companions. Global instability and personal setback can conspire to make people feel stuck — as though the ground lost cannot be regained. Despair thrives on one lie above all others: that nothing can change.

That belief is false. It has always been false.

Every single day offers a narrow but real opening — the chance to act differently, to rebuild something, to reach out and reconnect, to make one decision that moves life forward instead of letting it drift. Sometimes that means repairing a relationship. Sometimes it means finding focus again after being knocked off course. Sometimes it is simply refusing, for one more day, to let discouragement win.

We see this opening seized quietly all around us — rarely in headlines, always in substance. The reservist who comes home and re-enters daily life with quiet determination. The person who, after the hardest year of their life, chooses to begin again with discipline and purpose. These are not dramatic moments. They are the actual architecture of renewal. This is exactly how yesterday becomes jealous.

A Sentence Worth Carrying

That Uber driver may have meant nothing more than a friendly parting thought. But his words touch something deeply rooted in Jewish thought: time is not simply something we pass through. It is something we are entrusted to shape.

We are not prisoners of what has been.

As long as we are here — thinking, choosing, acting — the possibility of change remains open. The possibility of repair remains open. The possibility of building something better, one small and deliberate step at a time, remains entirely within reach.

“There is still time today to make yesterday jealous.”

It is more than a clever phrase. It is a posture. A stance you choose to take before the day has decided anything for you. And in times like these, it is a defiance none of us can afford to live without.