Un-intensions

It was never my intention to take the summer off, mainly because I don't view writing this blog as a task, but rather as a pleasure. But I have found the summer to have undone me in so many ways. I have had a bit of illness, never pleasant and always a surprise, and I have gotten very busy with some committee work, which was somewhat more time consuming than I originally anticipated. The illnesses are gone, thank goodness, and I hope never to return, and the work for the committee, which has been to honor some very deserving people, is drawing to a close, at least my part of it which has been to do the advance stuff, like invitations and letters. Committee work is always a challenge, because, it is necessary to depend on others, their own timetables, and the vicissitudes of the lives of more than one person, and everyone has them, whether it is one's car on the fritz, or visitors from out of town who require attention. Some of the interruptions are more pleasant than others, but we all have them. As a result of my unintentional absence from the blog, I am just stuffed with things I want to say and to share. All summer long, I have been thinking about life in all its different phases, ages, and how we travel from one to the other, revising our thoughts, rearranging our ideas, reinventing ourselves, and adjusting to the things that we have no control over. And all those things are good things. Wouldn't life be boring if we continued to think the same thoughts, have the same ideas, and never be open to the new, the challenging, the fresh, the exotic. Now that the whole world is open to us via the internet, easy international travel, extensive television coverage, we are party to all that goes on (whether we want to be or not). It makes me re-evaluate what I might have thought yesterday and a week ago, in light of new information. It also makes me realize that there are parts of my thinking that I really have to get to work on and bring up to date. This morning, I reflected on the fact that every morning, I awaken with excellent intentions of what I am going to accomplish that day. Some days I go to bed with a sigh of satisfaction that I have met my goals, and accomplished the many things I had set out to do. Other nights, I resist going to bed in the knowledge that I have been thwarted in my goals but a myriad of things, unanticipated traffic jams, allergies, someone at home needing our attention, phone calls, and a hundred other small and large annoyances. At this time when we are preparing for the New Year, we Jews are re-evaluating what we have done in the past year, and how we cane be more worthy in the new one. I was happy to attend a lecture on Saturday, where we discussed the sounding of the shofar, the ram's horn, and what it has meant to us. It is a clarion call that means many things to many people, and the Rabbis through the ages have interpreted it and explained it many times in many ways. For me it is the signal that there is a chance at renewal. It is the sound of the roundness of our lives, the sea ebbs and flows, the moon waxes and wanes and waxes again, the years come and go around, another fall, another spring, but we humans march in a single direction, ever aging, but with the chance to make our lives better ever day by our deeds, our thoughts and ideas. So as we await the sounds, the sights,and the tastes of the new season, the new year, let us also join in the renewal of this season, and re-create ourselves in a new way, re-invent a better self to share with the world, and not let our un-intentions take over. To live with the intention each day to find the good, the positive, the enlightening, and to live our lives looking for those things is to have something to be happy about every day.