An Atomic New Year

It's the Jewish New Year, so congrats to everyone who knows and who doesn't- but you've made it through another round of judgement. Clearly, our year of vigilant Shabbat prayer, annual Tashlikh, and determined commitment to tzedakah and the kosher lifestyle have spared us from God's anger, and has us written into the Book of Life for one more year. This deserves a great celebration!

Oh, you didn't do all of these things? Well, you must have slipped through the cracks. Which, if anything, earns even more respect and commemoration. What are you going to do about it?

New year or not, every day is a chance to accept and create a change. Every day is an opportunity to confidently assert to yourself- and to the world- that you are on this planet as a forceful sandstorm that can shift entire coastlines, not a grain on a beach susceptible to the slightest winds.

I, like many of you, forgot to keep kosher this past year. So to ask forgiveness for this, and my many other sins of the year, I decided to attend a Rosh Hashanah service at the Carrboro Hilton Inn. Yep, that's how we Jew it in North Carolina.

The Rabbi introduced a powerful metaphor, which I would like to share and turn into a challenge. We live in an atomic age. Less than a century ago, destroying a nation took armies of immense size and force, and more combined human and financial capital than has ever been devoted to any single task in history. Today we live in an age where the splitting of one atom- one little nothing so small and insignificant that we cannot see, imagine, and whose insignificance we cannot comprehend- can topple the strongest nation in minutes.

The individual human is in a similar position. A hundred years ago, only large institutions and a few select mega-rich could force their view of the world. Governments, universities, and industrialists blew the winds of change, while the general populace lamented and was swirled around, like the grains of sand that we were.

Today, each of us is an atomic bomb. We have the potential, the desire, and the access to opportunity to do something bigger, bolder, and more courageous than has ever been done before. We can inspire the world to our view. We can create the art we want to see. We can build the industries we know should exist. Inside each of us is this insanely passionate need to EXPLODE.

But still, traditionalists go around persuading us that we are not atomic bombs, but mere arrows. Our only power, they say, comes from the force of being one unknown, forgotten archer in an army of thousands.

My challenge to myself this New Year is to remember that that is a lie. If I want to do something no one else believes possible, I can. If I want to take risks, I can. If I want to forge my own path, and create the world I want to live in instead of fight in someone else's army, I can. I more than can- I have an obligation to myself to do so.  I have- we all have- the force of an atomic bomb.

L'Shana Tova and Happy New Year to you all.

-Adriel