Project Cheshvan
In EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva (2) the emphasis was prospective with an eye to growth rather than a retrospective inventory of our accumulated aveiros. We said there:
In Elul you are what you want to be. You are the sum total of all the aspirations and kavanas you have for growth in the ensuing year. During the rest of the year, however, you are what you do on a daily basis, with the reality check of what you aspired to in Elul being what you do on a daily basis in Shevat. If your growth was real enough to take root then it will still be around to blossom in Shevat.
If it was stunted, it won’t.
In Elul I was on the cutting edge of big hasagos. If I was the sum total of all my aspirations, kavanas, and the like then I must of have been at least ten feet tall at the time.
Then, as was stated above, came the reality check of what I do on a daily basis in Shevat, and the ten feet that I imagined myself to be back in Elul quickly morphed into an imagined five feet standing on shifting sands.
Well here we are in Nissan already, and my Elul Do List is still in mint condition, finger print free, and I probably could sell it to a collector on eBay. The way things are going I may well be spared writing a new one for this coming Elul.
And it wasn’t like I put it into a draw or something. I had it right on my desk next to my laptop along with sundry reminders scotched taped to my desk lamp and my laptop so that it has been in my face since Elul.
So what happened? The same thing that happens every year.
Nothing.
And after giving it some serious thought I think I understand why. For one to take on to improve in any number of given areas over the course of the coming year is like deciding to do something between now and the rest of one’s life.
A year is simply too long.
Not that it wouldn’t take a year or more (and quite likely a lifetime) to effect a proper tikkun in certain areas in desperate need of improvement. It’s just that with the finish line so far off into the distance of next Elul/Tishrei we tend to space out as to the immediacy of it all, and with all the time in the world to get started we never do.
The solution, as such, consists of reducing the year to a month, which forces us to start now, not then.
Bowing to the reality that approximately eighteen children under the age of ten will be running loose in my house at various times during the run up to Pesach, the Yom Tov itself, and its aftermath, my intention to afflict some wear and tear on my Elul list will be put off until Iyar.
If I can’t make a significant start, and hopefully a serious dent, in my Elul list during Project Iyar’s attempt to play catch up after six months of treading water, then EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva (2) gets deleted from the archives. The failure to do what needs to be done is already enough for my plate. It doesn’t have to be seasoned with hypocrisy.
Henceforth, we’re talking Project Cheshvan, not Iyar. That’s the deadline to seriously massage all those things you promised to do in Elul. Aside for things such as committing not to speak loshon hora and the like, which people tend to jump into right away (and usually fail) there’s too much doing in Tishrei for most people to make a go of it with any hope of success.
If you're one of those truly rare people who thinks he could pull it together in Tishrei with enough presence of mind to make a frontal assault on his Elul list you shouldn’t be reading this.
You should be writing it instead.
