Considering Mortality

Overall my weekend was very good. Starting with Friday night when me and a couple of others went to the new Rich Mix cinema in Bethnal Green. I only have good things to say about this new building. The movies are cheap - £6 and concessions even cheaper. I got a large fresh popcorn for 2.80. Yes, that's right and not a typo. I will be going back to this cinema with regularity. If they had a member pass, I'd buy one now. Hopefully when word gets out about how great it is, they won't do anything stupid like raise their prices.

Saturday I met up with another friend in Camden and we went to see An Inconvenient Truth. This was perhaps the first flash of Mortality I had over the weekend. In fact, it was highly depressing. But I don't mean depressing in a bad way. You just wonder about life and the world and what the hell is going to happen. I think I just felt like crying at one point. I encourage everyone to see this movie. I think it should be mandatory viewing actually. Before it's too late, if it isn't already.

Sunday saw me on the bus to help a friend of a friend with a project where they needed to talk to an honest to god American. So I volunteered to help out. On the bus ride there I saw a man who had collapsed on the sidewalk. There was a group of people with him, trying to help him. Calling for help obviously, putting him in the rescue position, staying with him until help arrived. It was a bit disturbing, but at the same time encouraging. That strangers will, when pressed, rush to the aid of another person. Still, I wondered what had happened, as the man was stiff and clearly unconscious. I wondered if he was going to make it, or if he had died.

Helping the friend of the friend with their project was actually very enjoyable. It's nice to use your brain. It's nice to be told you have skills you didn't really know you had. I suppose it could have all been smoke and mirrors, but I don't actually think so. So that was cool. Long, but cool.

Sunday night I spoke to my dad who told me he was going to Kol Nidre services. I thought this was a bit strange seeing as how my dad is very non-religious. So we chatted for a bit but he had to go. Then I suddenly started to miss that I wasn't going to Kol Nidre services. So I googled a couple versions of the Kol Nidre and listened to them while I dug out my High Holy Days prayer book and read through the evening service. Around this time I also made the decision to fast.

I'm not always very practicing about my religion. I've been various stages of observant in my past. But sine coming to London it's something I let fall by the wayside mostly. I tried to go to a synagogue once, but they were rude and obnoxious and very unwelcoming and to be honest, it completely put me off trying anywhere else here again. Still, when it comes to my own spirituality, I vaguely follow my own system of 'how to practice'. Which tends to involve sporadic picking and choosing of the available traditions.

So I'm fasting. For Yom Kippur. And this morning I read through the morning service. And again thought to myself about my weekend. About the movie I'd see about how we're destroying our planet. About the man I'd seen who had collapsed in the street. I'm not sure what I think about all of these things, except to say that I feel very introspective today. Yom Kippur is the day that you embrace your mortality. Admit your wrongdoings. Your faults. Your sins. Not necessarily against other people- you cannot seek atonement from God for wrongs to others, only wrongs to God, which, in my mind really amounts to wrongs to yourself.

To me, Yom Kippur is a way of forgiving yourself for your flaws and faults. And trying to find the renewed strength to try and be a better person. With the added hope that you are given another year to do it in. Ken yehi ratzon.