The Shehekhianu is the blessing Jews say when we experience something for the first time. We also say it when we celebrate a ritual for the first time during the year, or we eat a fruit for the first time during a season. I wrote it above to mark the first time any of us are experiencing this blog. My leap of faith. My new project: Never Done: My Mussar Year.
Starting on Yom Kippur, which this year fell on September 18, 2010, I committed to doing one thing every day that I have never done before. And to write about it. I have a successful month under my belt -- and I've already learned a lot about what my project is, and isn't.
I started out by making a huge list of things I have never done before -- mostly things I would like to do, and including some that I'm not sure about. Some are relatively small, like go to Upright Citizens Brigade, or go kayaking on the Hudson river. Some are bigger, like get a tattoo or adopt a child. I expected that I would pick something from the list every day, and go for it -- mixing up the little with the huge.
But in fact that's not how it's been working. I quickly learned that Never Done is more of an awareness practice than a Pick Your Own Adventure. As I go through the day, I almost always come to a moment when I notice that I have come face to face with something I've never done -- and that I can choose to do it. In this first month, there have only been a couple days when I reached into the grab bag -- once because it was 11 PM, and I hadn't done a Never Done yet, and once because I just felt like it. But most of the time, someone offered me a quail egg, or I took the wrong turn on a path in the woods, and ended up someplace new. It's a wonderful feeling to notice suddenly that I'm on the brink of a Never Done, and to say yes to it.
So why am I doing this? What's the journey? I'm 47, which strongly feels like I'm approaching 50. Most people tell me they think of as younger, and so do I. In fact, I can barely imagine fitting into the identity of a 50-year-old. But I will turn 50 on January 13, 2013, so I decided to make sure that 50 feels expansive to me, and not limiting. When I had the idea for Never Done, of course I thought about "a woman's work is never done" which can be subverted to be really quite expansive, if you think about it. No forced retirement (noting the irony that as I write this, the French are going out on general strike to protect the retirement age of 62) and eternal opportunity. The truth is, my mind is sharper than it's ever been, I am much more productive, creative, and effective than I've ever been, and I have more patience for people than I did in my 20s and 30s. But still, I am afraid of aging -- what it means to me, and what it means to others about me -- and so I decided to do something new every day, and see how transformed my life is by the time I turn 50.
Just a couple days into this practice, I talked with a 50-something-year-old friend who told me that at this point in her life she is more interested in returning to things she's loved in the past than she is interested in exploring new things. She said that is one of the main reasons she wanted to have a child (and she does have a child -- a terrific 9-year-old.) This made sense to me, and so I started thinking about Done Before, return, tshuve. I realized that if all I do is new, new, new, never done, never done, never done, that I won't be grounded or rooted, and I will miss returning to things I already love and value. The cranberries I pick every October, dinner with my old friend, swimming across Walden Pond. And so I have also been writing down when I return to something meaningful to me.
There is a part of the Jewish spiritual/ethical practice of Mussar -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musar_movement -- in which we choose an action and take it consistently throughout a year. Some people choose to give money to everyone who asks -- no questions asked, and some choose to stop for yellow lights -- every time, and some choose bless their food every time they eat. As I understand it, the idea is to stop the bargaining our minds can engage in: "I really have to go through this one yellow light, because the ice cream is melting in the back of the car." "If I give this man some change, then he's gonna want more tomorrow." You stop the voices, you do the action every time, no questions asked. And you see what it is like. If you forget and run the yellow, or you tuck into your slice of pie before remembering to bless it, then you get to notice why you forgot, and that is really at the heart of the practice. So far I have not gone a day without doing a Never Done, and I've never not noticed that I've done it, but I have forgotten to say the Shehekianu.
This is a long post -- and I haven't even included my list of things I've Never Done, or what I've done in the past month. So I will write up what I did on my first day of my Mussar Year, on Yom Kippur, and I'll just list what I did this past month, so that if I decide to go back and reference them later, you'll have at least a point of reference.
9/18/10
Never Done: Get caught on the wrong side
After morning services at the beautiful egalitarian shul in Bath, Maine, JW and I went to Popham Beach. I like to spend part of Yom Kippur outside somewhere beautiful, and for the past number of years I've gone to Popham. Popham is a wonderful sandy beach with a tide that approaches from two directions, and salty estuaries that cut through the sand. The tide comes in fast, and it's possible to get caught on the wrong side -- either out on an island that the tide cuts off entirely from the shore, or on the wrong side of the estuaries. I've been going to Popham Beach since I was 4 years old -- so for 43 years -- and I have never, ever been caught on the wrong side. But we were out playing on the beach (three adults and a 9-year-old) and by the time we noticed that the tide was coming in, we couldn't get back across the estuary without wading across swift, cold water up to our waists. Halfway across, not sure how much deeper it was going to get, my shorts and gatkes already wet, I noticed that this was a Never Done! And I started to laugh, and laughed my way across to the embankment. (Another 10 minutes, and I wouldn't have been laughing.)
And then ....
9/19/10
Never Done: Watched Veronica Mars
9/20/10
Never Done: Shipped lobster across the country
Tshuve: Climbed on the rocks at Ocean Point in the late afternoon sun
Never Done: Cooked Lobster Fra Diavolo
9/22/10
Never Done: Built a sukke
9/23/10
Tshuve: Return to the Boothbay Farmers Market
Never Done: Started a new screenplay called Temporary Dwellings
Never Done: Went for a walk in the woods, turned down a new path, and ended up somewhere I'd never been
9/24/10Never Done: Said the Shehekianu after eating a new fruit (Mollie's Delicious Apple) in the sukke.
Never Done: Spent time with my cousins G and P in Boothbay
Never Done: Saw four of the moons of Jupiter through G's telescope!
9/25/10
Never Done: Went into a golf clubhouse
Tshuve: Watched the sunset at Porter Preserve
Tshuve: Went to Robinson's Wharf, which was my father's favorite place, but it was also a Never Done, because I had never gone as an adult
9/26/10
Tshuve: Returned to Common Ground Fair
Never Done: Brought JW, met up with EG, met EK
Never Done: Introduced J to the grilled haddock sandwich at Red's
9/27/10Never Done: Walked from Peterson's Cove, over the little bridge, and up the steps, and out of the cove onto Farnham Point Road. It was a small thing, but I did say the Shehekianu over the bridge.
9/28/10Never Done: Had a film that I'd worked on at the New York Film Festival (Nuremberg)
9/29/10Never Done: Got my hair cut at Mudhoney, from a woman on a pre-agricultural diet (which I'd never heard of)Never Done: Had a film that I'd worked on premiere at the Film Forum (Nuremberg)
9/30/10
Never Done: Started working at the Camden Film Festival (met a bunch of new film industry people)
10/1/10
Never Done: Had Nero D'Avola wine at CIFF, met a bunch of new film industry people
Tshuve: Had lunch with an old friend, and for the first time were together as film festival colleagues
10/2/10
Never Done: Saw the film Do It Again, in the Bayview Cinema in Camden
Never Done: Went to a documentary pitch workshop
10/3/10
Tshuve: Picked the cranberries I always pick in October
Never Done: Saw the film Prodigal Sons
10/4/10
Tshuve: Left East Boothbay
Never Done: Went to sleep before the D's
10/5/10
Never Done: Spoke with 3 Muslim men after they finished their prayers on the sidewalk of the Merritt Parkway rest area. We spoke about Jewish and Muslim prayers for things we do for the first time.
10/6/10
Never Done: Spilled a full cup of tea all over JW's desk -- with hard drives, papers, and into power strips. (All was OK.)
10/7/10
Never Done: Had a beer milkshake (it was fantastic. Best milkshake I've ever had.)
Never Done: After seeing the Social Network, I accepted the Facebook friend request of my ex whose requests I'd been intentionally ignoring.
10/8/10
Never Done: Called the LGBT Center to inquire about adopting a child
10/9/10Tshuve: Woke up with laryngitis
Never Done: Went to A's bar mitzve
Never Done: Since starting this project, said the Shehekianu together in a group of other people (for A's bar mitzve)
10/10/10
Never Done: Saw the film Memories of Overdevelopment.
Never Done/Tshuve: Baked apple pie at AM's house, with apples from L's trees
10/11/10Never Done: Started the Brooklyn Soup Swap
10/12/10
Never Done: Got a call back from the LGBT Center about adoption
10/13/10
Never Done: Saw Big Bambu on the roof of the Met, with P.
10/14/10
Never Done: Had sex in our old apartment, the night before we moved out.
10/15/10
Never Done: Moved to our new apartment
10/16/10
Never Done: Woke up in the new apartment
10/17/10
Never Done: C visits in Brooklyn
Never Done: Watched the Mad Men season finale upstairs with landlords
10/18/10
Tshuve: Had 3rd quarter check-in with D, D, and N
Never Done: Introduced K and D for the first time
Thank you for reading. From here on out, the posts will be shorter, the life will be fuller, and maybe the formatting will be more consistent. (I've been wrestling with fonts and italics for 30 minutes now, and it's time to let it be good enough.
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