Legacy

Few of us are willing to take big risks in life.  Some of the sure things like little league baseball, work (and overtime!), cleaning, falling in love, giving tzedaka, watching tv, eating out feel secure because they are usual and dependable.

But none of these activities are “good.”  Most of them are warming, many are needful and some are wonderful.  But one aspect that they all have in common is that they do not contribute to making the world – in a macro or micro version – a better place.

As one wit put it, “It is easier to be empathic and caring about starving Ethiopians than their own family.”  Often we run into the arms of ephemeral gratification.  They are distractions that take us away from the fields of human interaction and change.

Here is a truth: The place where the most important decisions of life are made are around the kitchen table, not at the fancy schmanzy restaurant or the vacation in the Bahamas.  They happen where the most angry confrontations also occur, the kitchen.

When in rabbinical school a teacher, a famous scholar and author lamented, “Most people do not go to shul because they are afraid of meeting God.  They are frightened that, just maybe, during their prayers God will actually answer them. Worse yet, they will have to respond to what He demands!  They will be hopelessly trapped!”

I laughed.

I have since learned that what I took for a joke may actually have been more true than I was willing to admit or know.  People are genuinely afraid to commitments, which will lead to a deep emotional involvement.  That is why falling in love is so easy as there is little commitment with lots of palpitations, but being in love and staying in love is so trying. 

So it is with a three-day a year religion, dance classes, and horticulture.

The biggest risks in life are inevitable the most rewarding.  Great pride comes after graduation, a process of commitment.  The knowledge that your children will carry on your heritage after you is even greater.  Or a lasting love, one that involves forgiveness takes effort.  In life the best risks we take have the greatest yield.

Part of risk-taking means drawing lines.  It means saying yes or no to looting, allowing our children to rise or fail and to learn from their experiences, living a Jewish life of values and practice and certain absolutes of right and wrong.

What are you leaving as a legacy?