Write a letter.
Address it to those you love. Put into this letter everything life has taught you: What you learned from childhood, your education. What you learned from marriage and raising children. What you learned from work, from your triumphs and from your failures. What you learned from the death of loved ones, and the path of mourning. What is the meaning, lesson, wisdom of your life? What’s 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 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, with time to think and 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. 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
