Consequences: how our actions build character

The consequences of some actions are clear.

I drop a glass on the tile floor, and the glass shatters.

I turn away from someone who is talking to me, and something in the relationship shatters – in a small or a big way.

Over the span of a year, a decade, a lifetime – cause and effect tend to be less clear to us. How have our actions and their consequences added up over time? How have we built our character? Out of what have we built our character?

All of which makes me deeply grateful for the Jewish cycle of Holy Days, which are heading toward their annual high point.

It is said that on the Jewish New Year, our names are inscribed in the Book of Judgment. Who will live and who will die. Who will live in peace and who in anxiety.

It is said that ten days later – on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement – that Book, and our destiny for the year, are sealed.

During the in between days we are both cautioned and encouraged to engage in three sorts of actions that can assure us of being inscribed and sealed for a good year. (Interestingly enough, the seeking and granting of forgiveness with our fellow humans, a main focus of the whole period of time, is not among the three actions that can “avert the decree” of misery or death.)

Turning, or returning (in Hebrew, teshuvah), which involves heartful remorse, actions to repair or provide restitution for harm done, and resolve to refrain from repeating the behavior.

Prayer (in Hebrew, tefilah), an introspective and simultaneously connecting effort. The Hebrew root connotes both a discerning evaluation of oneself and a strengthening of ourattachment to God. This attachment exists as a matter of the nature of Reality, regardless of whether we feel “close” to God or not.)

Material acts of justice (in Hebrew, tzedakah), commonly understood to be an obligation to give charity, but which can be understood more broadly as acts that redress wrongs to individuals or to social groups.

There is a growing urgency as we near the end of our 26+ hour fast on Yom Kippur, our destiny all but sealed, yet even then our tears are said to be a gateway that remains open.

And the turning and re-turning, the discerning and attachment, the material acts of justice? On we go with these companions, day by day until the year turns once more, as we pause again to face the Character in the mirror.

The Answer to Your Big Questions

Like you, throughout my life I’ve grappled with the big questions – the same ones philosophers, theologians and awakening humans of all eras have had:

Who am I? 

Why am I here?

What am I supposed to be doing?

Sometimes I asked these questions as a general plaint, in a context devoid of particulars, with a kind of existential shrug.

Other times I posed them as dilemmas arose: Do I take this job?  Do I stay in this marriage? How much do I invest in this friendship?

The way I asked implied there was Someone – Oracle, God, the personal voice of my Destiny, an Inner Guide, who could see further, discern relative consequences, and who surely had the answer.

What I got was silence.

So I muddled through, and repeatedly asked yet another question:

How come I never get answers to my big questions?

An answer to that question came one summer during a brief ashram stay:  

Because you don’t listen to the answers to the small questions!

The full truth was – I didn’t actually ask the small questions. How do I respond to the check-out clerk’s obvious distress? What is the helpful thing to do here? Which words would be most appropriate? How might I begin this day to allow for more ease?

The small questions belong to moments, and they have an immediacy, an intimacy, that suggests the answers have a limited time frame and consequences.

It turns out that we don’t really know what constitutes big and little, the full reach or impact of any single action.

I distinctly remember how I taught my toddlers about “big” and “little.” I conveyed big by pointing to or holding out a large ball or cookie, by holding my arms as wide as I could, and speaking in a forceful, deep, and booming voice.

For small I  peered, squinted closely at my pinched-together fingers and spoke in a high squeaky voice.

If only it were this easy to know the extent of our reach or impact of any of our actions.

Our words, thoughts and feelings are all actions, and all leave traces. Our human perspective and knowledge are limited. And our days are nothing but one action after another. Even refraining, keeping our own counsel, are actions.

I suspect that the answer to “Why am I here” and the other big questions may come tucked into the pocket sewn from our countless small daily thoughtful actions.