Write a letter. Address it to those you love – your spouse, your children and grandchildren, your friends. Put into this letter everything life has taught you: What you learned from childhood, from growing up, from your education. What you learned from marriage and raising children. What you learned from work, from your triumphs and successes in the world, from your failures and disappointments. What you learned from the death of loved ones, and the path of mourning. What is the meaning, the lesson, the wisdom of your life? What is your message?
Do this for three reasons:
Do it for yourself. You deserve to know what life has taught you. According to a Jewish tradition, each individual human soul carries into the world one letter, one byte, of God’s message. You are a vessel of God’s truth. Have you discovered and delivered your message?
Write the letter for your loved ones. No one lives forever. And when your time comes, what a gift it would be to your loved ones to hear your voice, to know your wisdom.
Do it for your soul. Modernity has brought us many gifts. But one of the casualties of modernity is contemplation. Our ancestors lived in a much slower world. They had time to think, to dream. So we live exhausted from day to day, from appointment to project to vacation and back again, without ever stopping to wonder why, without the chance to grow in wisdom. That’s why we age. Without connection to the truth within, the spirit grows old, the soul grows tired.
No one is old who knows the truth of his or her existence, the purposes of life. Write the letter.
Ed Feinstein is the rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California, and a lecturer at the American Jewish University. www.vbs.org
