September 29th: A World Of Better

Over the last two weeks, including the ten Days of Awe, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my place in the world. I want to better myself, to correct my sins and be a more well-rounded, thoughtful, and present person.

As I look around the world, it is difficult to see perfection. It is far easier to find hate, poverty, strife. Entire peoples are fleeing their homes, only to find doors slammed in their faces. The problems of both of my countries are laid bare in front of both the population and our leaders, and yet nothing is done to fix them. Brothers and sisters fight against one another, seeing their differences far more vividly than they see their bonds of love. Most troublingly, we feel helpless to actually do much of anything to make the world a better place.

I refuse to participate in that, though. I can’t turn a blind eye. I can’t stay silent while so much needs to be done to help the world move forward. I can’t let politics and a fear of rocking the boat get in the way of my ability to feel like I can actually make the changes to the world that I think it needs.

In the next year, I hope to be able to bring fresh passion and enthusiasm to my work to repair the world. I want to be able to bring my commitment to social action forward, yet not buy into the pettiness and narrow-mindedness that is so prevalent in active debate today. Most importantly, I need to be in control of my emotions. I can’t effectively make the world better if I am getting angry or frustrated. I need to see the world as it is, accept it, and do what it takes to move it in the direction that I believe does the most good. This is my primary goal as we move into a new Jewish year, and one I hope can have a profound impact not only on my own disposition, but on the way that I can effectively inspire change.

I am constantly reminded of the words of Rabbi Tarfon in Pirkei Avot: “You are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are you free to desist from it.” This is the time in the Jewish calendar where we have an opportunity to take stock of our own lives, sure, but also to take stock of what is going on in the world around us. We can see the areas that need perfecting, the places where we can do better, where we need to do better. We need to look out for one another. We need to hold one another accountable. We need to keep each other safe. And we need to make sure that we are constantly evaluating the work we are doing to make those things happen.

More than at any point in our history, we have the power to quickly and efficiently change the world. We have ways to communicate across the globe in fractions of a section, ways to mobilize enormous communities for a common cause, ways to engage in meaningful and thoughtful debate. Let’s use these tools to drive us forward as a global community, rather than backward.

I pray for patience. I pray for thoughtfulness and kindness. And I pray that we can all work together to bring a little bit of holiness into the world.

If you enjoy the work of the Zoot Perspective, please visit my GoFundMe page, to help support me on my journey. Thank you very much.

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September 7th: The Threat of "Awkward"

I graduated high school with close to 1,200 other students. I have about that many friends on Facebook, and only about 300 of them are from my graduating class. To be honest, that’s because I wasn’t all that close with very many people during my time in high school. I was incredibly involved in youth group, which meant my friends were spread out across the Chicago area and the country as a whole, so I didn’t feel the need to connect to the people with whom I shared the halls of Stevenson High School.

High school was, for me, a lot of what it is for so many people. High school was stressful. We weren’t all that nice to one another. We didn’t really care about the personal struggles of another person; we were still trying to figure out what kind of people we wanted to be, let alone who someone else was trying to be.

The past few weeks, though, I’ve been thinking a lot about my high school classmates. This is the year that we graduated from college. We’re going to grad school, starting jobs, starting careers. We have a pretty good idea about who we are, at least for now, and, I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t have time for the pettiness of my high school years. My “friends” are posting their life moments on Facebook and I’m realizing that they are more strangers than anything else.

One moment from the last few weeks stood out to me. A Facebook friend who I had very little interaction with in high school and none at all since got a job working for a company I’m fairly familiar with. It was a really cool job, and I happen to know someone in that industry who might be a good name for that person to know. I thought long and hard about sending the person a message, congratulating them on their success and offering to help in any way that I could. But I didn’t. I let my silly high school mentality get the best of me, letting me pass up an opportunity to be kind to someone for fear that it may be awkward, or make me look ridiculous.

But why do I need to feel awkward? Why do I need to worry about what someone will think that I haven’t spoken to in five years and who, if things went badly, I wouldn’t miss for the next five? I want to be able to celebrate the successes of those around me, to be there to offer support for those who are going through a hard time, to listen to the amazing story of classmates who have gone out into the world and turned into some pretty decent human beings.

I am a very different person than I was at 16 years old at Adlai E. Stevenson High School. I don’t want to be judged for the person I was back then; I want to be judged for the person I’ve become, by the values I have discovered for myself, and the accomplishments I have worked so hard to attain. I’m going to assume that my classmates have done the same.

The world is full of some pretty nasty stuff. We have an opportunity to be kind to one another, to look out for one another, and to make things just a little bit easier. Let’s not let that dreaded threat of “awkwardness” get in the way of being the person we want to be.

If you enjoy the work of the Zoot Perspective, please visit my GoFundMe page, to help support me on my journey. Thank you very much.

For more content from ZPMedia, visit www.zootperspective.com.