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Rabbi Sally Olins

Rabbi Sally's Most Recent Column from our Newsletter, Chai Lights

FROM THE RABBI'S STUDY

All of us make take the time to reexamine our lives and life itself. We should ask questions, pray, and try to come to terms with who we are. At this time, we wonder about our world and what role we play in it. We look at our world filled with the potential of opportunity, with challenge, with hope and with love.

It is not an interesting or dull world in and of itself. Things are interesting or dull according to how we feel about them. Life is good, beautiful, and meaningful if it is viewed as a process and not as a state of being....if the good life is seen as a way of life and not as an attainment of life. Meaning to life is granted by the person living it. This has always been the message of Judaism.

Life offers no guarantee of happiness; nor are we granted notarized assurance that it will be filled with excitement and interest. Life is not happiness to be lightly enjoyed, but it is a battle to be heroically waged.

On an old Temple wall was found a picture of a king forging a chain from his crown, and nearby, a slave making of his chain,  a crown. The caption underneath read: "Life is what one makes of it, no matter of what it is made." I have heard it said that life is like a game of cards; you cannot choose the hand you get, but you can choose how to play it.

Take time to savor life, to think and to plan, to evaluate what has been, and to look forward realistically and hopefully. "Many people die," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "with their music still in them." What is the reason? It is because they are always getting ready to live, and before they know it, time runs out.

With much affection,