One of the sorry attributes of most adults is the routinization of the soul. We become complacent, taking for granted our daily routines, our closest relationships, and our familiar possessions. What we see, we frequently fail to notice - an odd form of blindness indeed. So it is that even residents of the most luxurious mansions fail to marvel when they wake up in the same magnificent bedroom they have used for the past two decades, just as we all fail to be truly moved by the miracle of having a bed at all. There is a creeping callousness, a form of progressive illness that engulfs our ability to be delighted and enchanted. Our addictive need for novelty and replacement leaves us unable to appreciate what is already ours.
Take, for example, the chilling statistic that the average American owns a car for anywhere between two and four years! After four years, you are holding onto a clunker, something to exchange for a shiny, new model — even though there is nothing wrong with the car you own, even though it gets you where you need to be. There are people who label themselves “adrenaline freaks” who need the high of something thrilling, something new to know that they are really alive.
The desire for novelty, it seems, lies deep in the human psyche. Perhaps it is connected to our fear of finitude, the certainty that death will one day come, that leads us to seek renewal and new beginnings. But that need to newness exacts a price as well: causing us to waste the precious resources of the planet in our madcap rush for anything new. Friendships are easily discarded as they age, we shift our organizational connections without regard to loyalty or the enriched depth that only time can add. That turnover poisons relationships in the work place as well: corporations fire their employees without consideration of their length of tenure, and workers leave their firms without any loyalty to the people who trained them and gave them a chance in the first place.
Our addiction to innovation leads to an inability to trust the permanence of anyone or anything. We live in a pretty lonely world.
There is another way; one suggested by the way the rabbis of antiquity read a verse in today’s Torah portion. In recounting the history of God’s relationship with the Jewish people, Moses says “This day, Adonai your God commands you…” Attentive to every nuance in the Torah, the rabbis note that, in fact, the ensuing commands were not issued on “this day” but rather were given some forty years earlier. So what does Moses mean by saying, “this day?”
Rashi summarizes earlier rabbinic commentary by recounting that “every day, they [the mitzvot] should seem new to you, as though on that very day you were commanded regarding them.” While the mitzvot come from an age long gone, there is an existential sense in which we must make them fresh with each new encounter. Rather than considering the commandments some ancient inheritance they can become electric vessels for an encounter with God and a deeper wisdom if we recognize them as newly issued for each new opportunity.
Whenever we face the chance to do a mitzvah, it is as though that mitzvah is presented for the very first time. Just as we are sometimes able to see a sunset as though for the first time, we need to open our souls to perceive a holy act in that same, original way. Rather than having to vary our routine, we can cultivate our capacity to be surprised, delighted, and enriched by actions we have performed in the past.
Take, as an example, parents facing the bat or bar mitzvah celebration of their second child. Even though they have witnessed hundreds of such celebrations — in the community at large and among their friends in particular — there is no doubt that they will feel marvel, profound emotion, and rich joy when their own child chants from the Holy Torah. Cousins and close family friends will be touched deeply, not because the ceremony is any different this time, but because they have opened their heart to the power of the moment.
The key to a spiritual connection with the universe is to do the hard work necessary to remain open to the moment, to every moment. If we approach prayer the way we do a beach, if we perceive the mitzvot as we do a moment in a loved one’s life, then we don’t need constant innovation and novelty. Instead, the very predictability of the occasion — the fact that we witness a drama that recurs over and over again — provides the loom on which we can weave the woof of our loftiest aspirations and the warp of our fondest hopes.
Novelty, it seems, is a cultivated art. It has more to do with our attitudes than our activities, more with our willingness to marvel than our need to be entertained. The power to renew lies within.
Shabbat Shalom.