Rosh Hashannah: The Holey Game
One of the most inspiring events of the past year took place on a golf course. A 59-year-old man, Tom Watson, made a surprising run at winning the British Open. Though he did not win, he came very close. This inspired Thomas Friedman to write a column about the event which he called 59 Is The New 30. Tom Friedman was amazed that a 59 year old could beat the world’s greatest golfers at least a decade after anyone would have dreamt it possible. Watching this happen, made him realize that people are capable of achieving much more than they think they can. When a man of that age whips the world’s best who are half his age, we identify. We say to our selves, “He’s my age; he’s my build; he’s my height; and he even had his hip replaced like me. If he can do that, maybe I can do something like that, too.”
The title of the column 59 is the New Thirty helps us understand is the fact that there is a new perspective on aging. Getting old takes place many years later than it did in previous generations. It is almost as though the High Holiday prayer Zachrenu l’hayyim melekh hafetz b’hayyim “Remember us for life O King who delights in life”, is being granted, that many youthful years are being added to our lives, and we can do much more with our years than could previous generations.
The Third Chapter
There is a new book which has the intriguing title The Third Chapter. The author is Sara Lawrence Lightfoot a sociologist at Harvard College. She has written about the new life stage emerging in the twenty five years after 50, due to the lengthening of the average lifetime. Lightfoot has compiled compelling biographies of individuals navigating their way through their fifties, sixties and seventies. These people, for the most part have been successful in their careers, but they now wrestle with the question of whether they are satisfied with what they have been doing. Might they like to prepare for a second ,more fulfilling career? Do they have some neglected talents they would now like to spend time developing? Most intriguing of all, how can they earn the joys that lie ahead for those who now decide to put giving at the center of living? I recommend to all baby boomers and their children that they read the book, and think about how they want to live the third chapter of their lives and how they will prepare themselves for their future.
Golf is a Holey Game
This Rosh Hashanna I would like to share with you some of my thinking about the ethical implications of the added years that many of us will experience as we approach and enter The Third Chapter. I would like to continue using the metaphor of golf, used by Tom Friedman, for there is much to be learned from the rules of the game.
It seems to me also that in many ways golf can be viewed, excuse the pun, as a holey game. It is holy, not because there are hai , 18 holes on the course. It is holy, not because it is so often played on Saturday morning, or even because the name of God is so often invoked on the golf course and with such passion. It is holy, not because it is played religiously, but because the basic idea of golf is itself a spiritual one. With the help of a few Hassidic stories, I would like to apply the lessons that can be learned on the golf course of life, to the course of our own lives.
To Do Better
In the game of golf, the object is not so much to beat the other player, as to improve yourself, to do better than you did last time. First, you struggle to break a 100; then you try to whittle it down to 90 or even 80. You spend hours analyzing what you’re doing wrong and through constant practice try to correct the faults that ruin your score. If your partner is going around with fewer strokes, it doesn’t upset you – too much. Rather, you concentrate on knocking a few strokes off your own score, and if you can do that, you feel worthwhile. Most golfers that I’ve met are strongly motivated to improve their game. I’ve never heard a golfer who said, “I’m doing the best I can, and I’m satisfied with remaining the way I am.” Every golfer that I know works at improving his game, even a little bit. Imagine what it would be like if we thought of life as a kind of game of golf. We would no longer look at other people and compare ourselves saying, “Well, at any rate, I’m not any worse than they are.” We would now ask, “Could I, with some effort and practice, be a little better, a little bit more honest, a little bit more sensitive today than I was yesterday?”
Just as I wonder about a golfer who says, “I’m doing the best that I can,” so I’m suspicious of the person who says, “After all, I’m doing my best.” When I hear someone say, “I’m doing my best,” I generally detect a note of irritation and impatience in his voice that makes me suspect that he is not really doing his best but only justifying himself, defending himself, for not doing all that he knows he should be doing. What I hear, when a person says, “I’m doing my best” is “I’m doing as much as I care to do. If I cared more, I certainly would be able to do more.”
Find Things to Improve
The Baal Shem Tov was once sitting in his house with his disciples. A peasant whose occupation it was to repair barrels called through the window, “Reb Israel, do you have any barrels to repair?” “None,” answered the Rabbi. “Oh,” replied the hoop-maker, “search well for I am sure that you will find things that need repair!”
The Baal Shem Tov turned to his disciples and said, “Listen well, for the voice of God speaks through the mouth of the hoop-maker. Let each one of us search his own soul, and we shall always find things to improve.”
If we would be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that, if we really wanted to, we could do better in many areas. We could be a little bit more honest in our dealings with others, with employers, employees or customers, our communal institutions. We could be a little bit more sensitive in our relations with our wives, our husbands, our children and our friends. I have yet to meet a person who claimed, “I’m really doing my best. I just can’t give any more,” who was stating a literal fact. Synagogues and every other good cause in our community could probably double their income if people doubled their care.
They say that once Rabbi Bunam went to the market to purchase grain. The farmer was dissatisfied with the price that the Rabbi offered him and said, “Do better!” This phrase captured the Rabbi’s imagination, and thereafter, he would challenge his disciples and their smug self satisfaction with their accomplishments by simply repeating the farmer’s plea, “Do better!”
In the game of ethical golf, the first rule is never say, “I’m doing my best,” say rather, “I’ll do better.”
Keep on Practicing
And, every good golfer knows that he must keep on practicing or his game will gradually slip and get worse. And, so it is in the game of ethical golf. The good player cannot afford to become self satisfied and complacent. Even the best of us must constantly watch what he does and says, take note of his faults, and work at being better; or his conduct will deteriorate and fall below the best of which he is capable.
A similar lesson was taught by a rabbi to a disciple of his. The pupil came to the rabbi and said, “You constantly reiterate the need for repentance. Yet, we are not a company of sinners. We are your trusted disciples, and we have tried to mold our lives after your example. We are good people. What meaning does repentance have for us?”
The rabbi told him, “My son, go to the creek on the outskirts of the town. Watch for a week what happens there, and then think about it, and you will understand the meaning of repentance for someone such as you.”
The disciple did as he was told, but when he came back to the rabbi, he was still baffled by the strange procedure that his master had suggest that he follow. He reported to the rabbi, “All I saw was women doing their laundry by the creek. They come with dirty garment and scrub them clean. And then at the end of the week, they return with more dirty garments and scrub them all over again.”
“My son,” said the master, “this is all the wisdom you need to learn about repentance. Our souls are like those garments scrubbed by the women. In our day-to-day encounters with the world, our souls become soiled, and they must be scrubbed repeatedly. Repentance is a kind of scrubbing to remove the filth which is in our souls. And the cleansing must be continuous because the assault of the filth is continuous.”
The master waited a moment and then he continued, “All of us must struggle against that filth. Indeed, you and I must struggle even more zealously than ordinary people. A rough garment does not show its stains as readily as a silken garment. No one can live in the world without being soiled by it. A saint is simply one who scrubs more diligently.”
The good player, whether it be golf or life, is not born that way. He becomes good through constant practice, and he stays good by constantly examining his game, spotting his faults and failures and continually working to eliminate them.
Using Our Bonus Years
The third chapter of life provides us with reasons to celebrate and opportunities to use. Not too long ago the newspaper carried a story of how President Bush the first celebrated his 85th birthday. In honor of the day he parachuted from a plane. True he piggy backed on the back of somebody else. None-the-less I was impressed. However, I could never have done that. As my colleague Rabbi Jack Reimer suggests, the closest I would come to celebrating that way would be to jump off a chair, holding an open umbrella.
The way to celebrate the third chapter, and, yes, the forth chapter of life as well,would be to ask, “In what ways can I improve myself? How can I be a better person than I already am?”
It seems to me that our lives would be a much better, if people who are capable of saintliness on the golf course, were to transpose those same attitudes to the home, to the synagogue, to the community and not use the excuse “I’m too old”.
Rabbi Israel Salanter was taught this lesson by a cobbler of his acquaintance. Late one night, while passing through the street where the cobbler lived, Rabbi Salanter noted the flickering light of a candle. He entered the shoemaker’s house and found him bent over his last, still at work. “My friend,” the rabbi scolded, “why do you stay up so late? You have worked since dawn and the candle is almost out in any case, isn’t it better for you to go to bed and rest?”
“Dear Rabbi,” the cobbler answered, “as long as there is light before the candle flickers out, I can still do some mending.”
And as long as our light still shines, we can get on with our mending. We can and should be doing better than we are. We must never stop practicing better ways of doing and living. This is true whether we are in the third chapter, the fourth chapter, or God willing, the fifth chapter to 120 years of our lives.
Amen.
