Just a wee fellow came home, all dejected and clearly upset, after his first day in the first grade.

Well, honey, what's happened?
What went wrong?

His mother was anxious to discover.

To which the little guy blurted out through his tears"

Teacher says we all have to come back again tomorrow!
 

We have all been heartbroken at the enormous loss of life, and the astounding and sickening wider toll on human agony and despair inflicted as a result of the World Trade Towers, and Pentagon, and western Pennsylviania disasters.

I don't know about you, but last Wednesday morning , I was like that little fellow---

As the smoke and collapsing of buildings continued, with almost no hope for survivors in the offing-I didn't want to come back to reality. Not this tortured America! Not to the knowledge of evil winning the day over nobility. I wanted to hope it was all a very bad and surreal nightmare. I didn't want to come back to the reality of September 11, 2001.

Well, like it or not, life is a matter of "coming back"! Every day we come back for more-more instructions, more experience, more definition, more everything-more praise, more success, more struggle, more confusion and frustration, more loneliness and sorrow, more validation, wisdom, yes, more everything. And for a while-more options.

The younger we are the greater the pliancy-the likelihood that by joining a new club, or taking horseback or sculpting lessons, or going out for cross country or the school newspaper, or a volunteer job at a local hospital, or a new summer camp or changing our college choice-we will be able to "re-invent" ourselves and change it all around more to our liking.

In our teens and 20s we change our majors and change our jobs and change our addresses and change our love life with a share of complication-so we go to summer school and lose a year of credits or begin a pension fund over again.

Ah, but the older we grow, and the more decisions we make-some of which, in retrospect, now assault us with their manifest stupidity-the less "wiggle room" life affords us. True or not, we suddenly seem stuck on our vocational track, our social rung, and here we stand, shockingly absent of those former options. Everything has become consequences! All of this-and we're only 25 years old! Just like that little fellow, "We have to come back again tomorrow," and we're not at all sure we want to!

This is the opportune and fitting moment to pose such issues because, three days before Rosh HaShana, the subject of change is crucial. An important question as the Holy Days arrive-"Is it possible to start again?" How long are we able to re-create ourselves? Some of us are able to grasp on to the old "Mid-Life Crisis" cover and use it for all it's worth as a perfectly legitimate opportunity to rearrange our life's direction.--
 

• new professional goals
• different choice of lifemate
• another sexual orientation
• a shift in our spiritual centering
• a radical redefinition of the nature of success and of our personal goals in life's second journey.

I'm not speaking of our beloved nation in the wake of this week's tragedy! Our nation has not stopped. Our people's resolve is irrepressible. I speak, in the spirit of our High Holy Days, of us as individuals.

George Bernard Shaw set about addressing human change in his play, Back to Methuselah. Setting: The Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are talking together in the beautiful garden. Adam tells Eve how he loves her, but hates himself. He laments,

I can't think of going on forever living with myself the way I am.

• He is a terrible disappointment to himself and to God.
• He has not been the kind of man he should have been.
• He has neglected to do many things he intended to accomplish.
• He has done some things he knows were wrong.
• Habits he knew he should break still control him.

I want to be different.
I want to be better. I want to
shed myself, like a snake sheds
Its skin, and begin all over again.

All of this, this way of looking at our lives, is the first part: perspective. We must see ourselves as people who are free to make choices-even tough ones. We are always able to opt for greater dignity by choosing the hard way of discipline!

"Though your sins be as scarlet, you shall yet be white as snow."

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is the father of the phrase, "The Power of Positive Thinking," which is an entirely Jewish concept, of course, which we foolishly allow to be taken over by the Church. Reverend Peale used to tell this story of a 20-year-old man who was in the blackest of despair. Everything had seemingly gone wrong for him and he was completely distraught.

In his mental funk, he endeavored to commit an irrational act. One misty, half-rainy night e stumbled into a meadow down by the sea off New York with the determination to take his own life; he endeavored to do just that.

He fell to the ground and lay inert. But at half-light in the morning he seemed to hear the surge of the sea on the shore, and then he saw the fading moon and the first rays of the rising sun.

At first he thought he was in heaven; then he realized he was on Long Island, and that he couldn't even kill himself, so inept was he. He sat up in the tall grass, put his head in his hands, and then sensed a voice, not an audible human voice, but nevertheless a voice, and the voice was speaking directly to him, saying:

You're on the wrong track!

I know what it is that you want to do but I have a job for you in this world.  Go everywhere to discouraged people and tell them in My Name:  certainly it can be done and you can do it.

It can be done and you can do it.

So perspective is important in life, but it must be matched by our second essential character trait: persistence and perseverance.

Jewish history reflects a record of 4,000 years of stubborn, hard-minded, unyielding persistence in the face of the world's most bitter and blind adversity. Still, somehow the words which God spoke to Joshua, which served to enhearten and embolden him and his generation, continue to redound to this day through the long and proud corridors of Jewish historic experience:

Chazak veh'eh-mahtz
Ahl-Ta-ah-rotz
V'ahl Tay-Chaht
Kee-eem-chah-Adnoai
Elohehcha B'chol asher
Taylach

Be strong and of good courage;
be not frightened, neither be thou dismayed
for the Lord thy God is with thee
wherever thou goest.

This time like all times is a very good one
if we but know what to do with it.

Hasn't this week's tragedy underscored this terribly un-sexy, but nevertheless realistic, fact of human existence:

Life is ten percent what we make it
and ninety percent how we take it.

Perspective, persistence, and perseverance are joined by one more "P" word to make a new start in life possible.-That word is Preparation. This entire High Holy Day season rests upon our doing our homework-heartwork, really!
 

One Talmudic Sage instructs:

If anyone comes to public worship
and leaves with the feeling he has got
nothing out of it, let him ask:
"Did I bring anything to it?"

I've always loved the story of the young rabbinic student who, just as we are now, was only a couple days before Rosh HaShanah, was seen hurrying with his arms full of prayer books and Talmud commentaries. Of course, he proceeded to spill the entire load right there in front of his teacher.

My son, what are you doing?

I'm trying to set my prayers in order, Rebbe.

To which the older sage knowingly replied-

My young student, these are the days to set Yourself in order first.

Like Adam in Shaw's play, Back to Methuselah, many of us want to shed our "old selves like a snake sheds its skin and begin all over again."  Well and good, and now's the time.

And as the teacher said to that little fellow-- "You have to come back again tomorrow, too!"

May you dear ones be blessed in your seeking and in your every finding. And may the New Year ahead be one of strength, sweet blessing, and abundant health for us all.

L'Shanah Tovah-