What do I actually want?

It’s fascinating how much we know about everybody else’s life. We know which minister is in trouble, which footballer moved where, which celebrity marriage is falling apart, and all sorts of details about people we’ve never met and who don’t even know our name. But do we know ourselves? I know what motivates the president. Do I know what motivates me? 

There’s an old story about a man so famously forgetful he could barely find his own shoes in the morning. Terrified one day that he would forget himself entirely, he tied a red string around his toe before getting into the bath, so that when he climbed out he would see the string and remember who he was. Halfway through the bath, the string worked itself loose and drifted onto the foot of the fellow next to him. He climbed out, looked down, saw a bare foot with no string, and panicked. Then he spotted the man beside him wearing it. He walked over, smiled with relief, and said, “Ah, now I know who you are. But who, in the world, am I?” 

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the time of year when we talk to G-d a lot. We ask for health, money, our children, peace in the family, a good year, a sweet year, a Jewish year. Please G-d, this and that and the other. But there is another conversation that needs to happen over these days, and that one is with ourselves, and it might be just as important as the one with our Father in Heaven. If I’m asking G-d for a good year, do I know what I mean by good? If I’m asking for a sweet year, what would make it sweet? If I want this to be a more Jewish year, what would make it more Jewish? Do I know what I want? 

Imagine a genie who gives you exactly what you ask for. What would you ask for? Less financial pressure. A child doing better. A calmer home. Better health. A difficult relationship sorting itself out. These are mostly things we want to change around us. They still don’t quite answer what we want our life to look like, and what our own contribution will be to actualise that dream. 

Take marriage. Most married people would say they want a good one. Nobody gets married hoping for 20 years of low-level irritation and arguments about who left the cupboard open. But what does good actually mean to me? It might mean that I don’t scream every time my spouse irritates me. It might mean that I forgive their faults with some of the generosity I manage to find for my own. It might mean I stop expecting them to think exactly like I do, learn to speak in a language they can hear, and remember that being right and being married are usually not the same skill. 

The same is true when I say I want to be a good parent. Does it mean my children get into the right schools and make me look competent, or that they know they can tell me the truth? Does it mean they behave nicely in public, or that I have enough patience at the end of the day to actually listen to them? I can pray all day to be a good father, but at some point I need to talk to myself about what a good father actually looks like. 

Because there is no magic spell on Rosh Hashanah morning. The next day we wake up with the same spouse, the same children, and the same personality. The finances haven’t changed substantially either, maybe a little less because we gave a nice donation in shul. So what is changing? Me. The picture I have of what I want, and how passionate I am about creating it. G-d can bless us with an incredible year, but we still have to live it. 

One of my favourite stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe is about Rabbi Dr Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. In 1971, Weinreb was a young psychologist in Maryland, working through some big questions about direction. He called the Rebbe’s office without giving his name and said he wanted to speak to the Rebbe. As he explained his questions to the secretary, he heard the Rebbe in the background say that there was a Jew in Maryland he should speak to, and his name was Weinreb. Weinreb, stunned, said, “But my name is Weinreb.” The Rebbe answered that if that was the case, he should know that sometimes a person needs to speak to himself. Weinreb said he came back to that advice again and again for the rest of his life. 

I love that story because there are times we are looking everywhere for answers and haven’t actually sat down and spoken to ourselves. We ask people what they think. We google. We discuss. We worry. We talk to G-d. But somewhere in there I need to ask myself some questions too. What do I actually want? What matters to me? What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of home am I trying to create? Give some words to the wishes, instead of just repeating that I want things to be “good”. 

We cannot control what the year will bring. But that doesn’t mean we have no idea where we want to go. A more Jewish year needs to mean something specific in my home. More Shabbos, more learning, more prayer, more charity, more family time, more joy around being Jewish, so our children don’t grow up thinking it is one long list of things that made their parents tired. 

We have a much bigger say in what the year ahead will look like than we sometimes think. We are partners with G-d in creating the life He asks of us and the life we wish for in our deepest truth. We are asked to dream. We just need to make sure we dream while awake. 

To a good and sweet year. And may we know what that means. 

• Rabbi Levi Avtzon is the rabbi at Linksfield Shul.