Look at the clock.
What did you do yesterday at this time? How about last week?
This isn't an exercise to test your memory. It's about exploring the ‘significance quotient’ of our lives.
So, if you could recall a specific hour from your past, how memorable an hour would it be?
Whether we feel time as a fast-forwarding tape, or as a monotonous drag, it tends to become a blur (with the exception of unusual events).
We can do better.
How? In Chabad Chassidic tradition we call it "living counted hours".
A 'counted hour' is an hour lived on purpose.
So take a moment to think: What is special about this next hour?
If you're at work, take a moment to consider why you do this every day. Consider that your job – irrespective of what it specifically is – contributes to a humming society. The money you earn, the interactions you have, all enable you to make this world better, friendlier, and Holier.
If you’re devoting the next hour to introspection, spending time with loved ones, reading or exercise, just consider your broader goal in life, and make this sliver of time count in that direction.
In a way, you'll be ‘slowing the clock’. By lifting this hour above the fray, you keep it away from life's blur. It will be a significant hour, because it was specifically and consciously devoted to a special cause.
At the end of your significant hour, have the discipline to pause again. Take 30 seconds to consider how it went. And another 30 seconds to frame the next hour.
Living "counted hours" will add up to living "counted days".
This is reflected in our counting of the Omer. Tonight, we said [in the liturgy]: "Today is eighteen days to the Omer". Not the eighteenth day. Eighteen days.
The liturgy doesn't consign the previous seventeen days of self-betterment to my past; if they’re significant days of growth, they're coming with me into my future.
With the passing of each day, when I take a page off my conceptual wall calendar, I don't want it thrown into the dustbin of my history. I want to take it with me.
“Counted days” translates into “days that count”.
And that equals a life lived on purpose.
Chabad wrote...
Here's the piece we read on May 6:
At a farbrengen (Chassidic gathering) during the days of Counting the Omer, someone said to my father, "The Alter Rebbe's (Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad) chassidim were always keeping count." My father took a great liking to the saying, and he commented: "That idea characterizes man's avoda. The hours must be 'counted hours,' then the days will be 'counted days.' When a day passes one should know what he has accomplished and what remains yet to be done... In general, one should always see to it that tomorrow should be much better than today."
Dahlia wrote...
Rachel wrote...
Mendy wrote...
Since 'hour' here means 'short slice of time', we have the capacity to shift our purpose when something (even something 'bad') happens and our focus necessarily shifts.
As to how we view the day in retrospect when things haven't gone as planned, I certainly have had days where there seem to be 'bad things', and I see no clear lesson to be learned.
But, believing in a G-d who loves me and is very present in my life, I believe that my challenges are necessary isometrics for my soul.
My lesson is in absorbing the punches and re-callibrating.
I need to take an honest assessment of damage, count my blessings, and figure where to go from here without losing sight of my life-objective.
I certainly don't mean to minimize anyone else's 'bad things'. That's just the way I see mine.
rachel wrote...
Leonardo wrote...