Self-Aggrandizement: L'hitpalel

Really, though, any Jewish day of prayer is atonement at some level: the Hebrew verb 'to pray', l'hitpalel, literally means "to judge or examine onself".

Today, though, on this most important of holidays, I took that self-examination more seriously than I've ever done before. Within the last year, I've increasingly become clear on the things I don't like about myself, the habits and ideas that I'd like to change. Most of them center around becoming consistently and thoroughly transparent, around becoming more honest in dealing with myself and really relating to others rather than trying to control them in some way, to get some result.

After a solid day of reading and thinking, I'm at the point where, in my own mind, these ideas are finally beginning to coalesce. But I don't think I can yet capture them well enough to put them into words, much less into written ones that stand on their digital own.

So, consider this a bookmark on the thought; I'll certainly be writing about it more in the not-too-distant future. Until then, I'll be regularly, rigorously, working it all through in my overcrowded head.

L'hitpalel Filed Thursday, October 13 2005.

L'hitpalel
Filed Thursday, October 13 2005.