Then and there or here and now?

Remember my email last week about liminality? Well, no time is more liminal that these ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, these ten days of awe as they are called.

And yet, if we have properly done our work during Elul, we come to this intersection and really shouldn't have a lot more work to do. We've joyfully prayed and feasted in our new year, and now await our holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.

As we have done our review, we know that we are completely unable to change one tiny thing about the past, so regret isn't helpful. Anticipation and worry are wasted because we cannot know the future. So when we do our spiritual work of teshuvah, turning, while we might think of how we could've handled something differently from our past, the only thing we can do with that information is to apply it to the right here and now. Living one day, one moment at a time, is a deep wisdom and not merely a superficial, trite aphorism.

Often, what we think we might have done in the past or see as a better course of action in the future is actually the very way we ought to be acting right now. We can't correct our past self, only our present self. And while my past self is a real piece of work, nothing I can do now will change any of that which is behind me. The important part of our work of repairing our hearts and souls is to make certain that we are doing in the here and now what we think our past selves should have done in the the then and there.

Only a fixed mindset will keep itself focused on the past or the future, looking at failure in the past and bemoaning a future which will only be more of the same. The ability to try, to keep moving forward, to learn from challenges, obstacles, and perceived failures, and to implement these things in the here and now, this is true teshuvah. This is a growth mindset. Each one of us can choose today to be who we wish we had been in a past situation.

This, my friends, is the truest work of teshuvah.