My Day

I think every day is meaningful. If I’m alive, if I can smile – the day is great. I think every day is a new opportunity. Every day we can learn new things, we can travel, meet friends. When being Jewish you learn that every day is a blessing. You wake up and you say “Thank you G-d for waking me up”. Jewish life teaches you that your life is a continuous travel made out of seconds and days.

Jewish life also teaches you that every day is precious and you should not count any day lost. Each day is a day in which I can grow in.

Each day you have a choice how to react and respond to events happening during the day. Judaism teaches us to do good to one another but first of all we should do good to ourselves.

I think it is great to help other people, give others a good feeling, give them food or money if they need it. I also think that in order to succeed with helping other people I should first of all help myself. I need to be a good whole person in order to help others. Doing good to others should not come on account of myself.

I do not agree with the author of the poem. I think my feeling about the day is what counts and the poet cannot tell me elsewhere. The author cannot decide for me if my day is lost or not. The poet wrote her poem with criticism. Maybe she lived in times that were hard, some people needed help but there were not many who could offer help when everyone was straggling to make a living. May be the author thought that even if times are hard, we should each demand more from our selves and think about others.

I think nowadays you can read the poem differently as if suggesting doing all the good things she mentioned to ourselves.

I hope that when we learn to smile for ourselves, we will also learn to smile to others and our days will not count lost.