The Days of the Years

I find this week's parasha, Vayigash, to be one of the most moving in the Torah.  This is the parasha where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers and reunites with Benjamin; Jacob learns that his treasured son, Joseph, is still alive; Jacob and his sons make the journey down to Egypt; and there is a beautiful, tearful reunion between father and long-lost son.

One of my favorite moments is when Joseph presents Jacob, his elderly father, to Pharaoh.  It's clear that there is mutual respect between Pharaoh and Jacob, that each man recognizes the power within the other.  Pharaoh asks Jacob,

כמה ימי שני חייך

How many are the days of the years of your life? (Bereishit 47:8)

Many commentators note that it's a little odd for Pharaoh to inquire about the age of his visitor, and Rav Hirsch offers an interesting explanation.  He points out that Pharaoh distinguishes between days and years; he takes this to mean that Pharaoh recognizes that a person can live a long life while only truly making full use of a few of his days.  In other words, the years of one's life represent the sum total of time lived, while the days of one's life are only those times when one lives up to one's full potential.  Jacob, too, understands this subtle distinction.  He replies, 

מעט ורעים היו ימי שני חיי ולא השיגו את–ימי שני חיי אבתי בימי מגוריהם

Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not reached the life spans of my forefathers in the days of their sojourns. (47:9)

When evaluating the qualitative nature of his life, Jacob feels that he has fallen short.  Compared to his forefathers, Jacob believes he has not truly lived his life to its greatest potential, and this pains him.

I find it humbling and somehow reassuring that Jacob, one of the great fathers of the Jewish people, judged himself so modestly and struggled with the feeling that he had not lived his life as well as he would have liked.  Personally, I spend a lot of time on the mental hamster wheel of, "Am I doing a good job with my life?"  There are a lot of factors:  Am I happy?  Am I making other people's lives better?  Do I express enough gratitude?  Do I spend enough time on worthy pursuits?  Am I stretching and challenging myself enough?  Inevitably, I will answer, "no," to at least one of those questions, thus sending myself into a spin of shame and fear that I am wasting time, that I am not using this life that I have as well as I could--should--be using it.  It is a very fine line between healthy self-evaluation and unproductive self-shaming, and I am the first to admit that I do not always walk it successfully.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently because my grandmother passed away on erev Chanukah this year, twelve days shy of her 101st birthday.  My Nana was, to use her own terminology, "a hot ticket."  She was an athlete; she got a college education when few women were doing so; she volunteered at causes that were important to her; she gave generously of her time and her money; she never lost touch with anyone.  At least in my mind, my Nana was someone who made full use of most of her days.  She lived a long life, and she lived it well.  In the days since her death, I've been thinking a lot about how, when I am ready to leave this world, I want to look back on my own life and believe that I used it as well as my Nana used hers.

Recovery is about putting the days back into the years.  When I was really struggling with my eating disorder, I spent years existing but didn't truly live even one of those days.  Now, I have the chance to live my life so that when I get to the end of my years, I'll be able to say that I lived the days well.  To be honest, sometimes it feels like a lot of pressure.  But it also feels like an incredible opportunity.  To keep it manageable, I need to start small--take it day by day, little by little.  Since we are about to begin a new calendar year, I encourage all of us to think about the concept of, "days and years," and try to infuse our days with more meaning.  As we enter 2015, I wish all of us a year of days well lived!