Good morning, Chaverim,
I thought this was a lovely quote from one of our own, Golda Meir, who has always been a personal hero of mine and someone whom I would have loved to have known…
Here is today’s Gratitude Thought in the Middle of a Pandemic:
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all of your life.”
Golda Meir
This is a message of empowerment for each of us, a call to examine and take charge of our selves, to make of our selves, our souls, our very beings something with which we can proudly and “happily” live all of our lives. This felt like something worthy of spending a little time contemplating during these days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur when self-examination and self-determination are the order of the day.
This quote may appear simple in its face, but I think there are two very important ideas here: the first of which is that we all need to learn to “trust ourselves”. Many of us find this very challenging. But, I have learned…the hard way…that, whenever I ignore or fail to trust my “gut”, my “intuition”, my inner “knowing”, my “sixth sense”, my “true self”, my “soul”, is when I get it wrong, I “miss the mark”, I get turned around and choose the wrong path. Getting in touch with with your “true self” takes some work, but it seems to me to be necessary work, well worth your effort.
The second important idea here is one about which I have thought and written a lot in these gratitude musings over the past 18 months: that each of us has the free will, the power, the CHOICE, of who we want to be in the world…each of us can “create the kind of self” that makes us proud and “happy”; a self that has honor and integrity and lives in alignment with its values; a self that is content and grateful; a self that is awake to wonder and aware of its connection to G-d/nature/the universe/something greater than itself. I think that the creation, or discovery, of this “kind of self”, and living our “happy” lives in integrity with it, is the work we were sent here to do.
May the new year be one in which we can each make some time for this work of self-creation.
Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova to all,
Marci
