Forget It

It is Passover time. It is spring and that means chocolate covered food products, odd shaped bread, budding romances, and sharing your home with friends and family, but before we can get to all that we need to prepare. Yup time to clean out the old in preparation for the new.

One theory goes that when most homes were heated using coal, by the end of the winter the grime needed to be cleaned out of the system. Spring afforded the first opportunity to open the windows and sweep the chimney. If you were already sweeping out the chimney you had to move everything outside (or cover it). This prompted a whole series of cleaning issues and so the cleaning would go on ad nauseum until the end of spring.

My theory goes farther back. I like to believe that our holiday cycle is tied with agrarian roots. Since wheat was a major stabilizer for the home unit the wheat cycle dictated many holiday practices. At the end of the winter, families would clean out their granary before harvesting the new. The importance can not be downplayed. Old grain will spoil and jeopardize the new harvest so thorough cleaning is a matter of feast or famish. Clearing out the old created a temporary excess of food. This late winter excess was now "use it or loose it". So people partied. Sort of a last hurah before the harvest. After all the status of the crops was already determined, time to party. This is the carnival season. Once the goodies are consumed you are left with only the bare minimum to scrape through until the grain is processed, this would be the period of austerity, Passover, Lent etc.

In the Passover ritual we are focused on leavened and unleavened bread. It is well documented that the ancient Egyptians mastered the arts of yeast in bread and beer. The Egyptians were advanced in many sciences and food production was no exception. Leavened breads became a symbol of the dynasty while anything not Egyptian was unleavened. If on the passover holiday we are emphasising our not Egyptian qualities no better way to embody the message but by forbiddening yeasted products.

I want to know if we can clear out the chametz we have in our minds, get rid of our spiritual chametz, detox the chametz completly out of the system. Can we dislodge those stuck chametzadik memories and stubborn qualities from our mind, or can we filter out so that essentially the memories do not exist.
I always wondered about meditation as a way to control these thoughts. I know that some people use yoga or meditation and such but I had one bad experience with meditation and I can't imagine trying again. I won't go into the details but lets just say it involved a certain mention of JC (who is not my father!).

I find it rather funny that about a month before Passover (from Purim on, perhaps) bread ceases to be bread but it is seen as chametz. I wonder if we end up eating more of it (to make up for what we will be denied) or less of it (in psychic preperation for the unleavened hoiday)? There also seem to be a few weirdos that think it is some kind of a mitzva to not eat bread before Passover starts. Guess what? It is no mitzva. So essen mine kinder. I don't know how many of you feel this way, but after we have cleaned and scrubbed and burned and rid our selves of chametz, the first crumbs of matza that "soil" the kitchen counter are like holy water on the altar. We need a little mess in our lives, even if it is K4P.

In the end, this time period, is all about cleaning. Interestingly we do not focus on the spiritual cleaning. We reserve the spiritual cleaning for after the summer, before we return to the fields to plant. That is when we need divine intervention the most. The Passover season is saying thanks for the intervention that we have been gifted with. Now we have to grab a dust buster and get cracking. So enough blogging and more cleaning. Oh, by the way, don't forget to empty your recycle bin and sent items etc. Don' t focus on the past. Move on to the future.

Chag Sameach - Happy Holiday

BTW:
In the next Blog I will be asking you about your holiday memories. If you have any you want to share with me I might include them in the blog!

Did I Right That?

We are human (Duh) which means we make mistakes. I think that is the definition of human, but there are times in my life were I feel like the mistakes define me and not the other "stuff". Do you ever get so focused on a mistake that you find that your day is ruined?

Sometimes the mistakes are so trivial...even not in retrospect but since my expectations are set before the mistake is made, once I have made the mistake, emotionally there is no going back.

So now I have made some mistake. I work in food services and many people's meals are dependent on my proficiency. Maybe I forgot to order the food or maybe I switched the days of the week in my head and now I am preparing for the wrong group. These are the small fiasco's in life, the ones that we can sweat it out and let the chips fall where they may. It isn't like I live in a barren desert. Okay, I do live in a desert but a rather well stocked one by most perspectives. If I forgot an order I can usually make do (and more) with what is in the storeroom. But that doesn't matter. Once I have made the mistake, the rest of the day I question myself.

Okay, that is the small stuff. But what about the big stuff, life and death stuff. We often say it is more important to learn from your mistakes than not make them, but when the mistakes profoundly effect other people, there can be no solace for the victims because a lesson will be learned.

This type of mistake takes forever to heal. Even after the physical scars have healed (if at all) , the memory of that mistake is paralyzing. It is the memory of those mistakes that bothers me even more then the actual mistake and now I feel even more guilty for focusing on me again. Why should I even worry about my mistake when others have suffered, are suffering because of what I did ...or sometimes because what I did not do? Can we ever let these events go completely? Can someone who makes an egregious life altering error let the past go completely? Aren't we meant to be responsible? Is there a statue of limitations on repentance? On the other hand, if we are only regret, what are we?

In a recent Freakonmics podcast I heard Stephen Dubner say,"Bad things happen, it is what we do afterwards that matters."

I believe this is where true heroism is displayed. Someone who never does, will never err, but will never then need to reflect on his ways and find a way to "live with himself" despite his errors.

Today I will try and make tomorrow a better day.