Achrei Mot אַחֲרֵי מוֹת

This week's post-Pesach Torah reading is Acharei Mot, After the Death of Aaron’s two sons. We cannot be sure about the reason for their demise, but what we certainly can do is attempt to learn from their dire experience.

So: how do we learn from our mistakes? One way is by admitting them. Because if we don’t admit them, we certainly can’t move on. Many brilliant leaders have stories about mistakes they made that led them to discoveries, inventions, or innovations. Has anyone ever heard of the Apple Lisa? The Macintosh TV?  The Apple III? The Powermac g4 cube? I’m guessing not. . .

Those were all failed inventions of Steve Jobs. Maybe one reason we don’t feel comfortable making mistakes is that we almost never hear of the ways even the most successful people make mistakes. I suspect the difference is that they learn from them—at least they know what DOESN’T work—and they move on.  Undeterred by failure. 

Oscar Wilde once said that “Experience is the name that we give to all the mistakes that we have made.” How would we otherwise learn? We learn to walk by falling down.  Perhaps we can learn to see a mistake as a detour, not a dead end. As gifts that enable us to grow and to make progress. And to remember the famous Winston Churchill statement: “Everyone makes mistakes, but only the wise learn from them.”  

If we refuse to admit our mistakes, then they fester, and we get stuck in pride and denial. At the other extreme, if we wallow in our mistakes, and assume the worst about ourselves, then we can never move on. We will forever see ourselves as failures.  In both extremes, we rob ourselves of our ability to move outside of ourselves and to connect in an authentic way with other people.  May we never be afraid to make a mistake or to admit a mistake. Doing so is the glue that connects us, each to the other.  The flaws in each of us can give us depth and nuance. Depending on how we deal with them, they can shine a light on our true character.

I know that we often pray the Leonard Cohen version of Hallelujah, but there is a beautiful passage from another Leonard Cohen song that is worth mentioning in this context. The song is called ANTHEM, and here is the refrain from that moving and haunting song: (is there anything in Leonard Cohen that ISN’T haunting??) Anyway, here’s the stanza: 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Our ancestors looked for a perfect offering, but we now know that that is an impossibility.  But the imperfections that are in us and in the world, the “cracks,” as Leonard Cohen describes them, are “how the light gets in.”  

Let us pray that we learn to see them, to appreciate them, and to learn from them.