Deja vu is a wonderful thing. It allows me to re-experience real or actually, most of the time, imagined events from my past. Last night, at my friend's big birthday party I had many such moments.
We came, we drank, we ate and we danced. Nice. Been a long while since I had a dance though my movements are a bit more restrained, containing the flailing of the arms more and the exuberance with which I used to throw myself on to the dance floor a bit more, as I grow in years and size. At some point I looked around and there were friends I hadn't been on a dance floor with for at least 20 years. How strange to be looking at each other in the same slightly shy, warm way we used to all those many years ago.
I watched a film this weekend in which one of the characters was going to a high school reunion. Her friend said she'd recently been to hers. "How was it?' Everyone looked the same, only swelled", she said. I understood in a flash last night what she meant. We all looked the same, moved the same only bigger and slower, like dinosaur relatives of our past selves. Nevertheless, it was a moment of sweet remembering and a wonderfully close evening.
Remembering is my theme for the next few days. As I approach Jewish New Year 5771, I also approach a period of contemplation and meditation. The ten days between the New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I always try to spend some time going back over my past year. How have I been? What have I done that I wish I could change? Have I lived in an ethical manner? Have I dealt with my world and the people I encounter with care and compassion? What will my actions look like for the next year? How have I treated my loved ones,my friends, my colleagues and also, importantly, myself?
I like the fact that even though I am not religious, I am a member of a tribe that does spend time, however cynically or ritually, looking over their own behaviour and vowing to do it better in the coming year. Not in the next life, not in some fairy tale paradise that may never arrive, or if you believe Richard Dawkins, never existed and will never, ever be there, but now, in this life, in this time frame. This responsibility is one that I could take lightly and to the outside view, it might seem so, but I know, deep in myself, that I do not take this at all lightly.
The work I do, the people I encounter, the things that drive me, are informed by this desire and responsibility to live in a world that I make better by my presence. I am not deluding myself, but as I said to a young firebrand cousin the other day, one person, one action, one moment at a time. I do, honestly, believe that I have the power to change my world. I can be better than I imagine by being aware of my actions and always coming from a loving space. I still have to tackle my absolute love of gossip, this is not one of my finer traits, but for the most part I think I get it right more often than wrong.
When I combine that with the warmth I feel for my biological family, I feel so blessed and this is a wonderful space from which to be entering 5771.
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