Prepent Day 29: Letting Go and Loving Fully
Sunday 10/02/16
Elul 29 5776
Dear Beloved,
Just as 2016 started I began to work with Laurie, my helpful life coach, who taught me to cut through the negative voices and focus on my big dreams for the life I want to live. One of the dreams that she had me write out was about love, the romantic kind. I wrote out a much edited paragraph in which I visualized what it would look like when you were in my life and I in yours.
This isn’t magic and it isn’t rocket science and it does involve luck but mostly I believe the way to live up to our dreams requires total clarity of intentions and what one is willing to get rid of and take on with no shortcuts or excuses. The rest is about letting go and hoping for the best. And staying present.
Voila.
Today, the last day of the year that was and the eve of new beginnings, I am excited to address this note to you. I’m grateful to you for showing up and being present in so many wonderful ways. For making me laugh. You taught me a new verb: “Imbricate” – to overlap like roof tiles, like rose petals. It is the best way to imagine what it is the lovers learn to do, to be.
The rest of this love letter will be shared privately but in public, as part of this ongoing journey to be more ready for the year ahead I want to invoke a plea for us, and for all of us, in all the ways we love in the world, to be patient, honest, and to always connect less from fear and more with love. So many of us are yearning for the love that nourishes our soul. May we all dream big and learn to earn it.
The eve of a new year invites us to wish each other, with sincere and chosen words, the blessings of a good life, with the best intentions.
Here’s to a year of more big dreams, and more real love. For us. for all.
That’s all.
Shana Tova.
Love,
Amichai
PREPENT: Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s annual journey to the new year, with 40 ways in 40 days to reflect, refocus, recharge and restart life. This year features daily love letters inspired by Lab/Shul’s theme for the High Holy Days, “וְאָהַבְתָּ re:love.”
Subscribe to Lab/Shul’s mailing list to receive this free daily blog in your inbox by checking “Prepent” as a special interest, share them on Facebook or Twitter, or read it online at the Forward.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO