Tonight I'm heading to shul for a special event about living as an Israeli, which I hope provides me some insight and something to blog about, perhaps. Not that I'm short of things to blog about, of course. After all, I recently blogged over at the JewsbyChoice.org blog with a little parshah commentary.
I'm finding that I waste a lot of time doing a whole lot of nothing, and after picking up my copy of "The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living," which I pick up just about every year and never get past the first few weeks, I realized that I need to pay more attention to the time I'm wasting. Telushkin, in the first-day comments for Week 3, notes the importance of keeping track of the time wasted, when you could be devoting that time to Torah study. He tells of a time when he was in yeshiveh when he kept a notebook with him at all times, keeping tallies on what he was doing and when. He shone with pride the day he spent more than 10 hours studying (among shul, etc.). On the train ride in this morning, I sat, doing nothing. Just riding. I realized my wasted time and got out my book, "Rashi's Daughters: Joheved." Although it isn't Talmud or Torah, it surely is a book in the realm of study. The amount of Midrash and Talmud talk could probably be considered a day's work (for the ladies anyhow).
I also picked back up my Intro to Hebrew Bible text last night, and began re-reading the text I haven't looked at since I took the course several years ago.
It's obvious that my thirst for knowledge and academics is overflowing. Frasier couldn't satisfy me last night, but these books could. I'm trying to make an effort to fill my day with learning. Fulfilling learning. I can't remember the exact quote that Telushkin uses, but he talks about a man who on his deathbed realizes all the time he wasted in his life. He says something along the lines of, it's easy to realize that you are wasting your life in the beginning, it just hurts more in the end. Something along those lines. In sum: Don't wait till the end to say "oops, wasted that there life I had doing a whole lotta nothing."
So that's what I'm doing. Fill it up with books, fill it up with literature. Fill it up with the things that spark your mind to thirst for more, so that you might never be empty.