Welcome back! We’ve missed you! This week we are starting the Torah from the beginning and reading Bereshit. To get us in the mood, here’s a tweet from our friends @RogueShul.
The beautiful thing about Torah is that you can turn it over and over and learn new things from it. Today’s commentary isn’t necessarily groundbreaking. In fact, it can be considered cliche. But, who doesn’t like a little cliche every once in a while?
Our experiences are the things that shape us. Our interactions with others, our disappointments, our achievements, and what we see going on in the world. In order for these experiences to shape us as people, we need to take them into account when we try to actively better ourselves. It can be easy to decide that you just want to throw out and block out bad experiences. However, these experiences make us who we are and this year has not been lacking in unique experiences.
We’ve learned a lot about ourselves and one another this year. We’ve learned about our boundaries and what we are willing to accept from others. We’ve learned that we are stronger than we believe. Our past has taught us this about ourselves.
Our cliche advice to you is to take this time to better yourself. Take all of your experiences from the last year and decide what to change about yourself, what to keep, and what to add. Maybe you’ll finally cut off contact with that person who doesn’t treat you right. Maybe you’ll find confidence in your talents. Maybe you’ll pick up a new habit or hobby. There are so many possibilities for who we can be. We just need to finally take the leap and there is no better excuse than a new year. New year, new me amiright?
Our title this week gave a hint as to what pop culture reference we’re going to be talking about today. I’m so excited because we’re talking about my (Marissa’s) favorite movie, The Lion King! Listen, I will take any chance I get to reference this movie and quote and this week I get to do both…I don’t think you understand how excited I am. Also yes, I’m in my 20s and my favorite movie is still The Lion King.
In case you’re a bit rusty on your Lion King knowledge, the scene we’re referring to in the title is from right after Simba runs away and is found by Timon & Pumbaa. Simba has just made what he considered the biggest mistake of his life (resulting in the death of his father) and is convinced he can never go back home. So, Timon & Pumbaa offer him some advice (click the image for the scene).
While Timon & Pumbaa may just be the comedic relief for the movie, they do give some great advice. Even Pumbaa’s little mixup of the quote is pretty dang good. Let’s review.
Timon teaches us that we have to put our past behind us. His advice is to keep moving forward and never look back (which if you’re familiar with The Lion King 1 ½, that is pretty much what he was doing at this point). We can’t change what happened in our past so we shouldn’t dwell on it. Simba can’t change the fact that a stampede killed his father, so he shouldn’t mope about it for the rest of his life.
But Pumbaa teaches us to put our behinds in the past. And I can hear you now, “But Marissa, this isn’t advice, he just messed up Timon’s quote.” I hear you. While, yes, Pumbaa did mess up Timon’s quote, he also accidentally stumbled across some pretty darn good advice. While Timon is right, we can’t dwell on our past and we need to move forward, he is missing something kind of important. And that’s where Pumbaa comes in. We need to keep our behinds in the past…well, metaphorically. We can’t move on and never look back or else we’ll never learn. We need to learn from our mistakes. Our metaphorical behind that we keep in our past is the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
It’s good to move on to the next chapter of your life and start anew, but don’t forget the lessons you learned in your past. Let them guide you to a better future.
Keeping in theme with this post, we urge you to make sure you vote in the upcoming presidential election. No matter who you decide to vote for, take a look back at the last four years and decide how you want to help shape the next four. Take the past and let it help decide how you’re going to change the future. Who do you want to be and how do you want that person to influence everyone else?
Stay safe, wear a mask, and wash your hands.
Love,
Marissa & Amanda
