Working and falling behind, and pulling yourself up and working some more. There’s always something else that needs to be done. With my work, as a writer, the words have to flow like water from an eternal spring, never ending, whether I know what I want to say, or not. Even when the well is apparently dry, the words must continue to flow, for they are my bread and butter, not to mention a new pair of shoes every few months. So, I pour out whatever happens to be in my soul onto the paper, and sometimes I am amazed.

    However, we are all caught up in doing the work before us, and in today’s world, the notion of a forty hour work week belongs only to the fabled past. For most of us, the work is constant and seemingly unending.

    In this season we are approaching the High Holidays, commonly known as the Days of Awe. The rabbis used to claim that even the most solemn, the most awesome of those days of awe—Yom Kipper itself—is made holy when we make it joyful, as a day of festivity. For we must feast and make merry before we fast. This is because making amends of our lives is, or should be a joyful process. It lightens the spirit and helps to forge those bonds between ourselves and those around us, bringing us closer to the energy that forged this world’s existence.

    And what does this have to do with work? Work is, or should be, our connection to all of humanity. Work pushes us, whether we go willingly or only because we must, out into the market place, to sell what we have and to buy what we need. It is through our work that we are able to communicate with our fellow journeyers, and it should ultimately be through our work that we bring together the broken shards of the universe. So, on Yom Kipur, we celebrate the fact that through our work, our involvement with other people, we have had these marvelous opportunities to make mistakes. These G!d given opportunities to learn and to teach. So, let us dance on Yom Kipur to all the opportunities around us, including the grand opportunity of making mistakes.