My favorite part of the Rosh Hashanah service, which I find in my synagogue’s Harlow Machzor each year, are these paragraphs of not only Jewish, but universal significance:
Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique…Every man’s foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.
Rabbi Susya said, a short while before his death: “In the world to come I shall not be asked: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked: ‘Why were you not Susya?’ ”
I love this. I look forward to re-reading it each year.
Can anything be more affirming? Can there be anything more positive emotion-generating than the absolute belief that you have something to put out into the world that is different than anything anyone else can put out there? And more, that it is somehow essential – deeply essential – that you do this?
I believe this. If I had to choose one thing that keeps me a resilient, committed, hard-working writer, it is this belief that I have something unique to say. My work, my pleasure, through all obstacles, is to find the way to say it.
Gentle self-assessment: notice (don’t judge, just notice!) how many of your swings toward a negative, downward spiral have to do with some kind of comparison to another writer, or other writers. If you notice this pattern, try to challenge your negative self-talk with Rabbi Susya’s words, substituting names of your own. Let me know if it helps to change how you’re feeling…
