Letting our Mistakes Flow Down River

During Rosh Hashanah, I’m going to try out the practice of Tashlikh where we can cast our regrets and self-criticism, and the weight of things we think we should have done or should have done better into the river and celebrate the fact that every day gives us a chance to try again and that people are resilient and most of the time are very eager to forgive. Let’s make sure that we’re easy forgivers of ourselves too.

Shanah Tovah! Happy New Year to those celebrating this significant Jewish holiday—Rosh Hashanah! I love symbolic holidays and the rituals that are tied to them. For most of human existence we lived lives rich in symbolism, ritual, and mystery. And now in the modern era, I think we’re still hungry for those shared representations of hope and aspiration and good will, but so often we have a harder time navigating them for many reasons.

I recently dug into the origins and meanings and traditional practices of Rosh Hashanah, and though I definitely am not a Jewish scholar by any means, there was one particular practice that appealed to me particularly. The practice is called Tashlikh. The practice calls for reciting prayers and either in thought or in actual physical representation in the form of bread crumbles or pebbles, cast our sins and misdeeds into flowing water to metaphorically be rid of them.

When we think about sins I think we too often think about all of our shortcomings, all the times we snap at our children or pounding on our steering wheel in traffic, or when we think ill of our neighbors or coworkers. Or, on the other hand, sometimes we think about all the things we know we should be doing more of or better or with greater gusto. In either case, the concept of repenting for those misdeeds inevitably implies a negative connotation. No wonder we don’t like to think about self-improvement if we are looking at things with those lenses.

But the concept of Tashlikh, is more letting go of those old ways. From what I’ve read and looked into, it’s meant to be more of a liberation from the weight that those regrets put on us. Certainly, if we have actually hurt others, then a part of evolving beyond those issues would be making amends, but so much of our psychological and emotional baggage is self made, isn’t it? We know how to do better, and since we never full acheive what’s ultimately possible, there’s always room to feel badly about our performance day after day.

So let’s cast our regrets and self-criticism, and the weight of things we think we should have done or should have done better into the river and celebrate the fact that every day gives us a chance to try again and that people are resilient and most of the time are very eager to forgive. Let’s make sure that we’re easy forgivers of ourselves too.