Dear Friends,
How do people change?
Ask a dozen psychologists, philosophers and religious leaders and — depending on their capacity for telling the truth — you might end up with one blunt answer: “Nobody knows.”
I can look only at my own life, at the people I have known and counseled, and at what I have learned from the vast libraries of philosophy, psychology and world religion. Through it all, I see one universal catalyst for transformation:
Suffering.
When does the Jewish calendar ask us to study human transformation? Rosh Hashanah — what we might call “the beginning of transformation.”
But how does suffering transform us? Simply put, people typically don’t want to suffer. People have a will not to suffer unnecessarily.
In this light, there is at least one teaching missing from the formal Rosh Hashanah liturgy that ought to be there. Rabbi Eliezer teaches in Pirkei Avot (2:10):
“Return one day before your death.”
This teaching is itself capable of making us suffer.
Know that you will die one day.
Know that you have not lived as well as you might have lived.
Know that you can still change — but that genuine change will require painful honesty.
As a clergyman, I lived around death. I watched countless caskets lowered into the earth and covered forever by dirt.
Before the soil falls, people give eulogies.
I sat with families as they prepared for funeral services and tried to compose a few words about the person who had died. In those meetings, family members often told me—with no small amount of bitterness — how differently the deceased might have lived.
I sometimes found myself counseling at least one person:
“This is not the day to tell the truth.”
Later, as the casket was lowered into the earth, I would think about the suffering some of those people had caused their families. Looking toward the grave, I would silently say:
“I wish you could have heard before your death the truth I just heard.”
Along with the casket, every remaining opportunity for change was buried.
A life marred by thoughtlessness — or worse — had now been written.
Finalized.
I believe there are two basic motivations for change: the suffering we cause others and our own suffering.
If we have a conscience, causing others to suffer should demand that we change.
I take that back.
I have known many people who wronged others, knew they had done so and yet remained entirely fortified against remorse.
One person told me flatly:
“I’m not into apologies.”
Perhaps, then, one purpose of this “day of transformation” is to cultivate a conscience vibrant enough to demand that we change before we cause more suffering.
Sadly, awareness of the suffering we cause is often not an effective motivation for change.
We might feel bad about it — but not bad enough.
If you could look back upon your life from the quiet vantage point of your own casket, would you change today, knowing that you might die tomorrow?
Would you at least apologize?
Apologizing is good evidence of change.
“Return one day before your death.”
Today might be that day.
Rabbi Mordecai Finley is Rabbi of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue.
