There are certain moments when a person can know that their lives have changed. A birthday, a graduation, or a new job. Very concrete moments when one moment you are defined as X, and the next you are defined as Y. Everybody goes through at least a few of those, and they can be marked as turning points in a person's life. However, it can be assumed that these are not the only times when a person can change. Yes, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a significant moment in the life of a Jew, symbolizing a transformation from child to adult, but at what singular moment is that switch? It doesn't exist. The time spent changing from child to adult is not that one Saturday morning, it is in the months and years studying beforehand. It is the sore neck from bending over the Haftorah, the sleepless nights worrying about ever being able to understand trope well enough, the countless meetings with the rabbi discussing the parsha or service, the time spent thinking about what this means to him or her, their parents, their community, and the Jewish community as a whole. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah day is just a culmination of that, a proof to the world.
Most transforming events follow along the same pattern. A man and woman do not fall in love on their wedding day and pledge their lives to each other then, it happened over years of being together and loving each other and was made legal and public on the wedding day. A student is not ready to take on the 'real world' on graduation, years of schooling beforehand created that and the graduation ceremony made it official.
But what about all those other times that do not culminate in one special event? Surely someone can change without having a party to commemorate it, right? Of course, and this is where the troubling aspect of changing as a person is involved.
Take, for example, a gap year student. A Jewish teenage girl who lived out seventeen years of her life in California. She graduates high school and decided to spend the next year on a gap year program in Israel. One is bound to change during that kind of experience, it is inevitable. But how and when are you supposed to know? How can you tell when you've changed fundamentally or even just partially? How can that gap year student look at her life after being in Israel for eight months and be able to discern what is different?
The pure and simple fact is that she can't. There is no moment that she can look at and tell that she is different than what she was before. So how is it possible to tell that anything happened at all? It's in the little moments, the small defining moments of her life.
It's the maturity of knowing she can put herself in a better mood in the morning by waking up a few minutes earlier to make coffee. It's another lonely night spent on Facebook and feeling ostracized by her peers for standing up for what she believes in. It's following the URJ blog for years as a teenager, and now seeing her articles featured there over and over again. It's receiving e-mails from total strangers offering congratulations on something she did. It's being tested over and over again on her values and morals so that she knows exactly what is more important to her. It's realizing that wasting 30 shekels on a lunch she could eat for free at home is worth the time she'll spend with friends. Conversely, not spending 30 shekels on something she doesn't believe in is worth the peer pressure. It's going to bed later and later to stay up working on projects and networking and applications and communications and being completely okay with that. It's getting over her own self-righteousness to save something that means a lot more for somebody else than her own sense of righteousness does to her.
All in all, has that now-eighteen year old gap year student changed? Of course. Does she know how she's changed? No, but she's starting to get a clue. However, it won't be in a final, teary good-bye ceremony that she realizes it. It'll be in the small and simple yet significant moments. All she has to do is look for them.
Most transforming events follow along the same pattern. A man and woman do not fall in love on their wedding day and pledge their lives to each other then, it happened over years of being together and loving each other and was made legal and public on the wedding day. A student is not ready to take on the 'real world' on graduation, years of schooling beforehand created that and the graduation ceremony made it official.
But what about all those other times that do not culminate in one special event? Surely someone can change without having a party to commemorate it, right? Of course, and this is where the troubling aspect of changing as a person is involved.
Take, for example, a gap year student. A Jewish teenage girl who lived out seventeen years of her life in California. She graduates high school and decided to spend the next year on a gap year program in Israel. One is bound to change during that kind of experience, it is inevitable. But how and when are you supposed to know? How can you tell when you've changed fundamentally or even just partially? How can that gap year student look at her life after being in Israel for eight months and be able to discern what is different?
The pure and simple fact is that she can't. There is no moment that she can look at and tell that she is different than what she was before. So how is it possible to tell that anything happened at all? It's in the little moments, the small defining moments of her life.
It's the maturity of knowing she can put herself in a better mood in the morning by waking up a few minutes earlier to make coffee. It's another lonely night spent on Facebook and feeling ostracized by her peers for standing up for what she believes in. It's following the URJ blog for years as a teenager, and now seeing her articles featured there over and over again. It's receiving e-mails from total strangers offering congratulations on something she did. It's being tested over and over again on her values and morals so that she knows exactly what is more important to her. It's realizing that wasting 30 shekels on a lunch she could eat for free at home is worth the time she'll spend with friends. Conversely, not spending 30 shekels on something she doesn't believe in is worth the peer pressure. It's going to bed later and later to stay up working on projects and networking and applications and communications and being completely okay with that. It's getting over her own self-righteousness to save something that means a lot more for somebody else than her own sense of righteousness does to her.
All in all, has that now-eighteen year old gap year student changed? Of course. Does she know how she's changed? No, but she's starting to get a clue. However, it won't be in a final, teary good-bye ceremony that she realizes it. It'll be in the small and simple yet significant moments. All she has to do is look for them.
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