A Letter to My Child — Tikkun Olam

Western Kenya, photo by author.

[a repost originally written in 2015, inspired by this beautiful piece by Rev. Julie Barnes]

A Letter to My Child;

You are yet unborn, a figment of any wild imagination I might have. But this is to you.

I write this as I sit in Kenya, sipping tea and listening to the sounds of children wailing, mosquitoes buzzing, and a boisterous, cackling laughter. I write this on the eve of the new year, at the dawn of a new beginning, in the period of atonement.

This new year feels of particular importance, somehow. This was the year where at times the weight of the world felt too heavy to bear and where tragedy became inexplicably bound and often times at odds with my own resiliency.

This was the year of enduring, of recovering, of reviving.

And now it’s over. So I write this you.

I write this to you to say that amidst beauty, there will also be brokenness. Amidst light there will also be darkness. And in the pursuit of justice, there will also be injustice.

This is the way of the world, my child.

But I also write this to say that without darkness, you cannot discover light. And without injustice you cannot orient yourself towards righteousness. Without the voids you cannot see the peaks.

This is the way of the world, my child.

So I write to you to say — on this eve of atonement and in this period of seeking forgiveness — that if I have learned nothing more in this last year it is to affirm, to embrace the brokenness that will invariably find you on this journey of life.

I say this not because you should remain in brokenness, but rather because you have a moral obligation to repair the world. To seek out the brokenness and to repair it. Tikkun Olam.

And you can, my child.

You can. And you will.

You will build great things by tearing down parts and rebuilding new ones. You will co-create a world founded in justice and centered on others. And you will not revel in your tragedy, but instead harness the energy towards doing something great, something healing, something restorative for this world.

You will stumble and you will fall, but you will find others to help you up along the way. You will be embraced by love and compassion. You will experience genuine empathy. You will discover greatness in yourself and find others who bring out that greatness.

Forget not your power, your resilience, your capacity for discovering the beauty. You will endure, you will recover, you will revive yourself in this journey of life. In the end, you will triumph, my child.

You will triumph in whatever messy, chaotic, and beautifully necessary way you can. Of this, I am certain.

So go forth, set the world on fire.

Tikkun Olam.