The holidays are over.
For weeks the calendar was full of things that had to happen on a specific day. Meals, candles, guests, the long table, the dishes after. And now, suddenly, it is just October. A normal Tuesday. Emails. School runs. The ordinary has come back, and it is a little bit quiet.
This is usually the moment we start planning. New goals, new habits, a new version of the year. I do it too.
But this week I keep thinking about a question that comes before all of that.
The first question
This Shabbat, the Torah starts over from the very first page, with the creation of the world. And a few pages in comes a story almost everyone knows, even without ever having opened a Bible: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
They have just eaten the fruit they were told not to touch. And when they hear God walking through the garden, they do what people still do when they feel exposed: they hide among the trees.
Then God calls out to Adam. It is the first question ever asked of a human being, and it is only three words long:
Where are you?
Of course God knows exactly where Adam is. So it was never really a request for directions.
I love that it isn’t What did you do? And it isn’t Why? It doesn’t start with blame or with an explanation. It just asks you to look around and say where you actually are.
We answer the wrong question
And here is the very human part. Adam does answer. But what he says is not a place. It is a reason:
I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, and so I hid.
He is asked where, and he answers why.
I recognised myself in that immediately. Someone asks how I am and I explain what happened. Someone asks where things stand and I explain why they aren’t further along. We are very good at reasons. We are much less practised at simply saying: this is where I am.
Before you plan
So before the new goals, before the lists, here is what I am trying this week. Three small questions, no explanations allowed:
- Where am I, honestly? Not where I should be. Not where I was in January. Today.
- Where am I with the people closest to me? Closer than last year, or further away?
- Where am I hiding? Everyone has a spot. The thing we keep busy around.
You don’t have to answer them out loud. You don’t even have to like the answers. The point is just to know where you are standing before you decide where to go. It is very hard to find your way anywhere without that.
The question was never meant to catch you. It was meant to find you.
The ordinary days
The holidays are loud and beautiful and full. But most of a life is lived on the days in between, the ones nobody marks on a calendar.
Maybe that is where this question belongs. Not on a special day. On a normal Tuesday in October, when nobody is watching and nothing is expected, and you have a quiet minute to look around.
Where are you?
Shabbat Shalom.
Rivkah
Oriya Jewels is handcrafted Jewish heritage jewelry — pieces made to be worn every day, for people who carry their story with them.
