What would we change if we knew what existed beyond space and time?
Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you knew what you now know?
Jacob, father of our people, lived a life of paradoxes. He and his descendants brought and spread monotheism and morality; they produced marvelous inventions, creations that changed the way the world thinks and imagine, and became the fixed point of the attention for humanity. Yet, Father Jacob was both a hero and a deceiver. While his story is the foundational point for the world and his life was often adrift in an almost unfathomable series of choices, most of his own making, each one full of adventure, promise, redemption, and terror.
“O human race! Born to ascend on wings,
Why do ye fall at such a little wind?” -Dante
Jacob’s majestic dream mirrors his life. He climbs a ladder to unimaginable heights and plummets to earth faster than his ascent. On Pesach, we say “My father [Jacob] was a wandering Aramean…” What if those words were exchanged for “My father was a deceiver?” Choices. With the whisp of a single breeze he/we are compelled inwardly to choose one way over another, and life is diverted and never be as it once was or could have been had we elected a different track.
Life is full, brimming with endless possibilities. We make decisions, never knowing what might happen if we choose another course. Endless are the possibilities of what might have been at another college, making another career choice, a different mate, an uttered the word from our heart instead of withholding it before death intervened and took away that opportunity; and far too quickly we become so absorbed in the life we elected that we forget what else might have been. We sometimes imagine alternate realities in our dreams and thoughtfully reflect on those choices as the years pass come back to us in moments of deep introspection.
In Kabbalah it is called the “shattering of the vessels.” This is the brokenness we experience when we consider the wrongness of the path taken and the harm and pain we feel and relive over and again. Interestingly though, Kabbalah does not view the cracked vessels we have become as mistakes but as opportunities.
If we knew then what we know now how would we change the trajectory of our lives? What choices would we tell ourselves to avoid? And which would we opt to take?
Jacob made some awful decisions; his tale is one of flight, fall and acceptance. His life is our own. It is no coincidence that we are called Israel, which ultimately became Jacob’s name after he realized that life was not about self-doubt but listening to the gentle breeze and accepting what G-d brings to us.
Jews are master storytellers. At Passover we not only share the story of the Exodus but the seders of our youth, yarns about our grandfather, the long nights of the past, the aroma of soup boiling in the kitchen... Each year we retell the victory of the Maccabees with their inspiring narratives. We read stories each week at Shabbat services. And we are actors, comedians, and chapters of our lives each telling the story of a different adventure. Sure, we know the outcome and when telling the story, we cannot help but wonder and imagine what might have been a different outcome had we been wiser.
But we are not.
The saga of our lives is like Jacob/Israel. We are lost and found. We despair and are galvanized by hope. Each step taken has been replete with meaning, both intended and unimaginable but not without meaning.
Like Jacob/Israel we have travelled to distant places with different outcomes, most of them in our mind’s eye as the stories grow and morph as we learn to view them through the lens of our newfound maturity. We can see our footprints in the many stories we tell about ourselves. They have been full, meaningful, and even if some have been missteps we are buoyed by the words of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessels has presented us with new opportunities.
At any given moment we exist in the summer of our lives, full of expectation and dreams and choices yet to come. We are the story and each day we write a new chapter.
