This Sunday evening Jewish people around the globe will begin to observe the holiday of Yom Kippur. As a Jewish broad who’s been around for 79 Yom Kippurs, I’m finding the older I get the more serious I take the essence of this solemn holiday.
In junior high school, I repented about talking behind a friend’s back.
In high school, I repented about talking back to my parents.
In college, I repented about talking nasty to my boyfriend.
Hee hee. There seems to be a pattern here – stemming from words tumbling from my mouth without proper forethought or restraint.
I probably still do this. As illustrated, a few months back I recall one of my grown sons very seriously asking me, “Mom, do you ever think before you speak?”
My answer: “I don’t think so.”
So okay, along with repenting about negative and unfiltered babbling, I’ve also begun to think seriously about the concept of renewal and how we can emerge from Yom Kippur prepared to choose to live differently.
And this year, along with having increased my practice of yoga, I’ve been impacted by my instructors’ emphasis on self-examination. On looking at ourselves without excuses. On looking at how our words can adversely affect others. On looking at how we must keep doing the difficult work in order to live with intention.
So this Yom Kippur, I’m focusing on the use of mantras to help me return to my values and to the person I want to be.
And who is that illusive person? Someone who possesses a focused mind and steady emotions when faced with conflicting thoughts and daunting challenges.
The Day of Atonement is not just about repenting and fasting. It’s about taking an honest accounting of ourselves while returning to our values. This also entails recognizing that we have the capacity to change.
What exactly is a mantra?
It can be a word.
It can be a phrase.
It can be a short statement.
Mantras work. Repeating a simple phrase quiets mental chatter. Aids in sleep. Fights depression.
The important factor is to repeat your mantra – to return to it again and again and again as we return on Yom Kippur to our values, and to God, and to the person we want to be.
So I asked myself, “What words do I want to live by in the year ahead? What words will help me reinforce how I want to think and act in the coming year?”
Here are some that crossed my mind:
Be here now
This too shall pass
Progress not perfection
Lowered expectations yield greater satisfactions
I’m grateful for my blessings
I can control my responses
They were good.
They were true.
They were relevant.
But something was missing.
I not only needed a collection of words that could interrupt harmful and habitual though patterns that did not serve me well, but I wanted my mantra to reflect my own life – my writings – and my personal mandate.
I narrowed it down to two sentences that are and have been for many decades the foundation of my columns:
Life is Always Under Construction
Keep Preserving Your Bloom
And then I recalled a message I truly believed I received directly from my father about a week after he passed away.
I was driving in my car, sad and tearful, trying to buoy myself up after such a devastating loss. I asked myself: “What would my father have said to me if indeed he were sitting in the passenger seat beside me?”
And then it hit me like a thunderbolt:
“Don’t let the world make an old lady out of you, Iris.”
One morning, shortly thereafter, I woke up and three magic words rolled off my tongue – close on the heels of my Dad’s message:
Preserve and Bloom
So what will I be doing in the Jewish New Year of 5787?
Hopefully I lot less trash talk and a lot more repeating my mantra while meditating.
I may even master the habit of thinking before I speak, although that is doubtful.
For now, for my own good health and for my family’s sake, the words I want to live by are Preserve and Bloom.
What word, phrase or group of words inspires you to be the best version of yourself? I’d like to know.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
