There is a pasuk in the Book of Yirmiyahu (8:6) which, I believe, encapsulates what this month, the month of Elul, is all about. Yirmiyahu made the following observation about the people in his time:
אין איש נחם על רעתו לאמר: מה עשיתי? כלה שב במרוצתם כסוס שוטף למלחמה.
There is no one regretting his evildoing, saying, “What have I done?!” They are all continuing to run like a galloping horse going out to war.
When a horseman is racing out to the battlefield, the horse is not thinking about anything except reaching its destination. It’s galloping at full speed, its mind focused on nothing else. Yirmiyahu bemoans the fact that the people were always running, always rushing, always hurrying to do something, like a horse running out to battle. And when we’re always running, we have no time to stop and think, to ask ourselves, “What have I done?” or “What should I be doing?”
Many years ago, a friend of mine was telling me about someone who, he believed, owed him about half a million dollars’ worth of goods, and refused to pay him. This issue consumed my friend, and gave him no rest. He was determined to get those half-million dollars.
I tried explaining to him that he was already very wealthy, and this half-million was not going to ruin him.
“Why don’t you just let it go?” I asked him. “Wouldn’t your life be so much better if you just forgot about it? Is this worth all the time and emotion you’re investing in this? Isn’t your focus and energy worthy so much more?”
“Are you crazy?!” he replied. “You want me to just forget about this, when somebody is refusing to pay me the half a million dollars he owes me? How can I do that?!”
For two years, he was entirely consumed by this problem.
Years later, I was speaking to a friend of his who had partnered with him in a number of business ventures. He was telling me about a certain very successful venture that he embarked upon, and I asked him whether he had partnered with that friend.
“No, I couldn’t,” he explained. “He was too consumed with the half-million dollars. He didn’t have the time or focus for this venture.”
This fellow told me that his friend would have made $50 million dollars off this venture – which he could not get involved in because he was too busy trying to collect the $500,000 he thought he was owed.
This is what happens when we don’t stop and think, when we live life like a horse galloping to the battlefield. We become irrational, and we involve ourselves in things far less valuable than other things we could be doing.
We all believe in Hashem. We all believe that Hashem governs the world. We all believe that He gave us the Torah. So why do we not always follow the Torah? Because we don’t think about this. We make ourselves so busy with so many things – some important, some not – that we don’t have the time or focus to think about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and whether we’re doing the right thing.
This is true about our relationship to Hashem, and also about our relationships to other people. Why do so many married couples become unhappy, even though they love and care about each other? Because they don’t stop and think about what the marriage needs. They get so busy and so involved in many different things that they don’t focus on each other.
Elul is the time to stop and think, to stop the “galloping,” to take time out of the constant race, and to think about what we’re doing. This is the first and most important step we need to take as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and work to make next year, and the years after that, better, happier, and more fulfilling.