Alas, again in a skipping-lots-ignoring-ongoing-conversations-and-poking-my-head-for-a-short-time manner, but still, it's that time of year again, and, yeah, still in a risk of sounding a bit strange:
On Wednesday evening (as most of you clever people probably already know) starts the Jewish holiday of 'Yom Kippur', which means 'Day of Atonement'.
This is a day of soul searching, of trying to better define to ourselves our faults, and try to accept it upon ourselves to become, at least a little, better people. A day of repenting past wrongs we did, looking and finding it in our hearts to forgive wrongs done to us, and trying to remember to learn from this process in the rest of the days of the year. The holiest day of the year for practicing Jews.
On a rough division, there are two kinds of wrongs people can do: against G-d, and hurting their fellow human beings. In Jewish tradition, if the person committing a sin against G-d is truly sorry for what they did, repenting and taking it upon themselves to try and avoid repeating it, G-d forgives those sins.
The deeds which hurt other people, though, are not so 'easily' and personally forgiven. If somebody did anything to harm another person, they would not be able to cleanse themselves from that deed, no matter how much they'd pray and be sorry and repent and try to do good in the future, unless they make amends with the person who was hurt by that deed. As long as peace between people is not achieved, the 'sin', so to speak, is not 'erased from the books'.
Regardless of the date in the year, I'd hate to think I'd offended somebody here (or everywhere else, for that matter). I don't think that the attempts of becoming a better person than one already is, is something that needs a date or a certain holiday for it, of course. It's just that, for me, having a certain day in the year to stop my daily runnings around, and think of nothing else but the really important things, is a good reminder of the order of priorities I'd like to have in my life.
So, since Thursday will be, for me, this day of soul-searching, of trying to create a new start in my on-going effort of 'becoming a good human being, or at least a slightly better one', I would like to ask all of you here, if I offended anybody, or hurt any of you lovely people, to tell me about it, and give me the opportunity to apologize, fix it if possible, and also learn from my mistakes, and try to not repeat them (there are so many new ones to practice, why repeat old ones, you know?).
In case I offended anybody, and can't communicate directly with them about it (for whatever reason), I can already say that I'm truly sorry. I can honestly say that I didn't mean to - you're all so considerate and thoughtful and generally all-around lovely, that there's absolutely no room for such a thing here. However, I might have had a slip of a keyboard, or mistaken somebody's intentions, or many other possible so forths. Y'all are so understanding, you probably didn't take offense anyway, but I want to make sure, all the same.
Please don't get me wrong - I'm definitely not trying to go around in a 'holier-than-thou' show off, or force my personal beliefs on others, or make statements which may be understood as criticizing anybody else's beliefs and way of living. If anything, being around here, among such a rich versatile group of kind and clever people, exposed me to a lot more ways of choosing to lead one's life than I've ever had a chance to see before, and showed me much more of the beauty and richness that is the world we live in.
[Edit: This is especially true for me this year, of all other years - I've been all but absent from the ongoing conversations of b.org for most of it, and then depended so heavily on them, on you, during the crazy months of writing my dissertation and my computer trying to lead me to despair, one error at a time.
I turned to you guys in all those sleepless nights, and I honestly don't know how I could have done this without your presence and your font. During the day I could have my hand held by friends and loved ones (well, mostly virtually held, as I was, like a friend described it, pretty much on house-arrest, which I corrected to computer-arrest, but still). However, the nights would have left me completely lonely and crying-when-nobody-can-hear and needing to grasp at any shred of, well, chocolate, I guess.
And I didn't have to face that (um, not that I gave the chocolate up, of course), because I knew that each time I needed some comfort, or just a reassurance that I'm not the single person who is still awake in the whole wide world, you were there. And it's not just in the technical sense - I'm afraid I'm spoiled enough that just having an ear and a shoulder, no matter whose, may prove insufficient. It was your ear and your shoulder (OK, scary visual place) and your fonts and words of encouragement, which were the only reason those nights were not a wholly horrid experience and I could look to the ones I had in front of me with ability to assume that things wouldn't be that bad.
I don't think I can express how even knowing that, let alone actually enjoying that, was meaningful to me. It's not the topic of my post, but thank you. Thank you guys so very much.]
[Another Edit: each year I hope I'll be able to make it less long and less ramble-y, and each year I realize once again that I completely lack the ability to write anything concise. At least I'm consistent.]