You’re not bad at all

We stood at the foot of the mountain; a rush of adrenalin ran through our bodies as we started our trek. We had set a goal – to reach the top, and we would not turn back until we reached there.

Up and up we climbed the steep path. Finally after climbing over a big rock we found ourselves on a rather smooth trail. ‘Phew’, I thought I needed a break. But then the trail started going downhill!

“Hey! We’re lost!” I cried out.

“No we’re not”, said my friend who had trekked up this mountain many times. “This is just a small dip; it only goes for a minute. Believe me we’re on the right path, just look up ahead and see the steep hill… ye we’re going to climb it.”

After many more steep climbs and just a few dips we reached the top.

Before long we had to head back down, so down we went, slipping and sliding to the bottom. Our easy trek down was interrupted a few times, by some rocks that we had to climb over to be able to continue on our south-bound trek. Thank G-d we made it safely to the bottom.

Dear friend, the month of Elul is upon us. In Judaism this is referred to as “reflection” month, where one looks back at the year that passed, looking for the holes and the wholes in his service of the Creator.

And we can be pretty sure that when we reflect we will find a year that looks like a heart thermometer, ups and downs. And we must ask ourselves: Does this mean that the whole year is a failure, just because of a few falls?

So many of us tend to look back at the year and whine about: “what if…” and “next year will be…”, and we just wipe off a year as a failure due to a few minor/major dives.

We must remember to take the helicopter view, to be able to look at the good that we’ve done and see how much we have climbed higher over the year and then make the math. At the end of day we are not so bad after all…

Of course we must repent, but that does not mean that we are evil. All it means is that we are mountain climbers with beating hearts.