by David Geffen
you should get very selective how you spend your time.
All of us have heard that people wonder how much they would change if they could live their lives backward,acquiring at life's beginning the lessons they had learned at
its end. Another Elul tip - how greatly our lives would be enriched if we were able to imbibe not just Pirkei Avot, as we do this time of the year, but also Pirkei Savim,
the wisdom of our bubbies and zaddies. There is quitea bit they could offer us.
From American lore. When the noted judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was still active on the US SupremeCourt, he and Justice Louis Brandeis would takewalks every afternoon. On one of these occasions
Holmes, then 92, paused to look with real admirationat a beautiful young girl who passed them. They stopped, and the elder said to the younger with a sigh. "Louis,oh to be ten years younger again."
Halfway between my fortieth and fiftieth birthdays, a big change came over me. For the first time inmy life, I was confronted by the thought that my yearspast almost certainly outnumbered the years ahead.
At some time in our lives, we all must face this. What can we do to lessen that shock. We can write - be it diaries or more letters or articles without even using pencil or pen in this computer era.
We can record our thoughts by working out the questions which we can answer - or by having someone else, our children or oral history professionals quiz us
for the record - future record of course. At this time when amazing inventions are bought for as much as a billion dollars, we can sit down, surround ourselves with talented people
and invent. This is not for the money but for everlasting name recognition. My uncle, Professor Abraham Geffen in the field of radiology, invented the "Geffen Ruler," to measure certain organ movements
on an x-ray. Who knows - the "Berman mouth bite," the "Cohen Internet Clipper ," the "Levy cell-locket" may come from your brain and your hands?
I learned this from a Talmudic sage one summer at Camp B'nai B'rith. In his lecture he said emphatically, "A midlife crisis is merely God's way of making us ask ourselves if we are living to our full potential, of making
us take the responsibility for that within which remains unlived."
Now that I am in the middle of my seventh decade, I hope that I can honestly say that I experienced the joy of passing on "hochma-wisdom" to younger people. A person, not seen or heard from for 20
years but I did know well then, wrote and brightened my day. "David, every week or so I say to someone in my bakery shop, David taught me how to treat people this way." I never realized what I had done, but now
I have at least one point in my favor- sure that as Elul arrives you, too, can record all the good points you have accumulated. Don't just repent in the days ahead, calculate all the "positive stuff" with which you have filled your days.
How many of us have read Shakespeare lately? In Jerusalem, we can now watch "Shakespeare's Plays on the Run." We do the moving from site to site in different parts of the city, and the actors
and actresses await us. It is almost like waiting for Godot.
In "As You Like It," Shakespeare divides life into seven stages. What a great time of the year to read the insights of this master.
Man-Woman begins as "the infant mewling and puking;" and then "the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail, unwilling to go to school." Later we become the lover "sighing like
a furnace;" then the soldier "seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth." At the fifth stage, we are "the justice in fair round belly with good capon lined." Moving on to the next stage, the individual is seen
"with the spectacles on nose and pouch on side." Mr. William Shakespeare pulled no punches as he told us we will end with "second childishness - sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
The question is, just as we squeeze notes into the Kotel, how can we make sure to focus on the spaces in our lives, waiting there anxiously just for us to take an interest so they too can be filled.
My friends, you either rust with "disuse" or grow musty with "stagnation." But - it can be different. If you have that feeling, that there is something special you are endowed with - yes you have a talent which can
be utilized well, grabbing hold of yourself - giving it a try( even if you do not succeed) will add a dimension to your life you never expected.
"Dor holech, dor ba - a generation comes - a generation goes" Ecclesiastes informs. What this means is that each of us is a significant link in the chain of generations.A wonderful function of the computer is that its
innards can reach out to the past and pinpoint those ancestors of ours. We may never have seen their faces, but when we truly know that they existed and that is why we are here - our personal being can take on new
meaning. Do we have to spend hours digging deeply and becoming aware of the circle of life they led? Yes, if we so choose as genealogists daily make discoveriesof human beings and not clay pottery.
Tiku baShofar . Each morning of Elul, the sounding of the shofar proudly says to each of us - you are here - they were here - your children will be here. Now it's your turn to grab what you have, both character and money,
and leave an inheritance, whatever it may be, to shapethe future. Am Yisrael Chai now and for eons
