This is one of my favorite times of the year, when Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, calls me to atone for my sins from the past year. Everything stops, and a new sense of possibility emerges. But in order to atone, one must engage in forgiveness – asking others for forgiveness, and forgiving yourself. It is the latter part I want to focus on: What it means to forgive yourself.

On New Year’s Eve many of us make “resolutions” for the coming year. We vow to exercise more, visit our parents, or pick up a new hobby. We make these resolutions with gusto, only for them to flag a few weeks or months into the New Year. But Yom Kippur is not about looking ahead so much as it is about looking back; the task is to see how we’ve done in the past year and to account for our actions, words, and deeds.

What’s clear in all this is that no one can be perfect. There’s no way for everything that we do to hit the mark. But nor is there a place to hide from our imperfection; unless, of course, you choose to ignore the call to examine your life. For me, there is only one answer to this call: “Here I am.”

Forgiving yourself can be a very slippery slope. Our goal can be to go through the motions of religious services or rituals so we can wipe our hands clean and forget the past. But to forgive ourselves is not about forgetting – putting these things out of sight and out of mind. That approach is a sure recipe to repeat past mistakes. On the other hand, forgiving ourselves is not about holding ourselves hostage to the past. Surely, we must move on, especially if we want to make ourselves and this world a better place. There’s much work to be done.

As I write this I fear that I am trivializing something so vitally important by oversimplifying it; but, then again, aren’t some of the most important things the most basic? Isn’t that why these things often are the most difficult to face and engage with?

This is true in communities as well. In so many communities, people, collectively, sometimes will not face the past or account for their words and actions. Instead, things remain mired in finger pointing, inaction, and stymied by ingrained narratives that tell us we cannot or will not change. Here, too, the task is not to forget the past, minimize it, or pretend it never occurred; nor is it to be held hostage by it. The task is to step forward, see and hear that which has shaped our past and ourselves, and make the choice to move ahead.

It is the very notion of making “judgments” and “choices” that is so essential here. Will we choose to look back at the past and have the courage to truly see it? Will we make judgments about where we stand, and our own role in bringing us to this point? Will we actively choose our path moving forward? Will we have the humility to know that there is no silver bullet to improve the future, only that we must stay engaged?

I love Yom Kippur because it holds me accountable for examining the past even if I did not shape all of it. I must be willing to look at it, understand where I am, what I have done, and what I still need to do. I cannot simply blame others for my current circumstances. It reminds me that I cannot sit on the sidelines. I must answer the call.