
It was a sweltering summer morning in Toronto as I waited in line to go to the pool, thrilled to be back in the water after a year and half of not being able to swim. Because of restrictions limiting the number of swimmers in the pool, on this particularly scorching day I missed the entry cut off and was denied access.
Hot, sweaty and uncomfortable, I took out my frustration on the hapless lifeguard, who was simply doing his job admitting a limited number of swimmers. Shamefully, I put up enough of a fuss that his supervisor got involved. After enough griping, I was allowed in.
You’d think I would be relieved that I could start my lap swim. But I wasn’t.
I recognized that I did something very wrong: I vented my anger onto someone who didn’t deserve it. With Rosh Hashanah only days away, I knew this was no way to enter the New Year, a time when we are obligated to seek forgiveness not just from G-d, but also from those we have hurt through our words or deeds.
I knew I needed to make amends with that lifeguard. But how?
I recognized I needed to process through the Five Steps of Teshuva to work through my inappropriate display of emotions. Originally outlined by Maimonides and amended over the years, they include: hakrat ha-chet(acknowledging our sin); charata (remorse and regret); viddui (public confession of our sin); azivat ha-chet(abandoning the sin); and kabbalah l’atid (the welcoming of a future void of that sin).
Acknowledging that I did something wrong was the first step. Taking ownership of bad behavior is never easy when our pride is on the chopping block. I felt like an idiot for raking this poor lifeguard over the coals. I may have gotten my wish to be granted pool access, but at what cost to my moral compass? When I could no longer rationalize my conduct, I knew I had to admit my omission.
Honoring my conscience made processing the second step of teshuva, regret, easier. Accepting responsibility for hurting others implicitly provokes a sense of remorse. Remorse is humbling. It reminds us of our inherent human weaknesses and vulnerabilities. With my own vulnerability triggered by regret, I could imagine how that young man must have felt as he stood there bearing the brunt of my anger in a situation that was out of his control. It was that measure of empathy that guided me to the third step of teshuva, and the hardest step I believe: asking for forgiveness. Openly confessing my misdeed and publicly apologizing to the lifeguard was a humbling, ego-deflating act, which is why it was so difficult.
Openly confessing my misdeed and publicly apologizing to the lifeguard was a humbling, ego-deflating act, which is why it was so difficult.
We prefer to think of ourselves as decent, ethical people. Hurting someone by our speech or through our actions flies in the face of this self-image, and apologizing accentuates the unflattering side of ourselves.
We tend to relieve this psychic conflict by either minimizing the degree of our sin (and its impact) or rationalizing the offensive behavior away altogether—exactly what I did trying to argue my way into the pool.
“I was hot! And it was a frustrating situation,” I told myself initially, defaulting to my physical and emotional condition as a way to rationalize my behavior.
But here’s the thing: With the New Year only days away, my act of apologizing actually felt easier, because if there is ever an opportune time of year to apologize, where that sense of humiliation and blow to our ego feels less severe, it is leading up to and during the Days of Awe.
The High Holy Days extend to all participants a kind of grace: Knowing we are all enjoined at this time of year to forgive makes it a bit easier to accept the apology as well, knowing that we ourselves may have our own apologies to extend to someone else.
Notwithstanding the ease I felt in asking the young man for forgiveness, completing my teshuva did not end with the apology. As relieved as I felt having received the lifeguard’s forgiveness, the work of making amends, in some ways, was only just beginning. The fourth step—leaving behind the sin—requires a commitment to not repeat that same behavior that triggered the apology, and step five, accepting the future, asks us to step into the future with positive intentions to do better in the coming year.
Good intentions are just that: intentions. Chances are that we will make a mistake or likely hurt someone again in the new year. Was there a method I could employ to help me lessen the chance of perpetuating my sin and hurting someone else as I did that lifeguard? Perhaps there was. The idea came to me quite easily in fact. Taking two pieces of paper, I wrote down the one misdeed I know I need to work on: my temper. The first one I placed inside my Chanukkah menorah, and the second inside my bathing cap. Three months from now, when I take the menorah out of storage, a note will be there to remind me of my New Year’s resolution and to check in with my progress. How am I doing? On track? Or not? And eight months from now, when the outdoor pool opens again, inside my bathing cap will be a second trigger to stay on course, or get back on it.
With these strategies in mind, fulfilling the five stages of teshuva has become my personal, practicable, 12-month mitzvah project that keeps me accountable to my best intentions and reminds me of my commitment to return to the G-d given goodness and wholeness that reside in me and in each of us, not just during the High Holidays, but all year round.
Lorne David Opler, M.Ed., is a community college Professor of Fitness and Health Promotion and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with NSCA – the National Strength and Conditioning Association.