Slow Down We Move Too Fast

Does January 1 have any Jewish significance?  This year, it sure did.  It was the 8^th day of Chanukah. 

The last day of Chanukah is called “Zot Chanukah” after the day’s Torah passage which begins "Zot chanukat hamizbe'ach - This is the dedication of the altar.”  In the Chasidic tradition, this day contains the final reverberation of the Days of Awe.  In THIS way (pun intended!), January 1^st was a most significant day.

As 2017 begins, I’d like to start sharing my “wish list” of things that can make our lives and our world a better place.

Let’s start with slowing down.

For the first time since 1993, life expectancy rates have gone down.  Professor Mark Rank thinks that the cause is stress, particularly economic stress.  Rank noted that the fall in life expectancy rates was largely due to an increase in deaths caused by heart disease, stroke, unintentional injury and suicide and “as stress and anxiety goes up, so too does the probability of one of these causes of death.”

Stress ruins our quality of life.

When Yaakov meets Pharaoh, we find a very unusual exchange (Bereishit 47:8-9):

ויאמר פרעה אל יעקב כמה ימי שני חייך: ויאמר יעקב אל פרעה ימי שני מגורי שלשים ומאת שנה מעט ורעים היו ימי שני חיי ולא השיגו את ימי שני חיי אבתי בימי מגוריהם.

And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "How many are the days of the years of your life?"  And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my life are one hundred thirty years. The days of the years of my life have been few and miserable, and they have not reached the days of the years of the lives of my forefathers in the days of their lives."

Pharaoh asked a simple question: how old are you? Why didn’t Yaakov answer him directly? Yaakov didn’t just respond with his age.  He was providing commentary.  It was as if he said, “I have been around for 130 years, but if you want to know how many years of quality life I had, that’s a different story.”  [In fact, Ramban notes that Pharaoh was inspired to ask the question because Yaakov looked much older than anyone Pharaoh had ever seen and Yaakov answered that he looks so old because his life was very stressful.]

We live in a crazy, busy, non-stop world.  That comes with great opportunities, but it also comes with the risk that all this activity can negatively impact the quality of our lives as well as those around us.

Are we spread too thin?  Have we taken on more than we can handle?  Do we have the proper boundaries set up between work time, family time, and time for our religious activities?  We pride ourselves on being the most productive generation ever.  We may be living long lives, but that doesn’t mean we live better lives.  That is up to us.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.  It’s the life in your years.”  May God bless us with both.  May we make the most of both.