THE DONKEY SAYS: Coming of age has never been so mundane

10 Shvat, 5767

I think I may have come of age earlier this evening. My status as a Bar Mitzvah, a Confirmand, and a person who has spent four months abroad, did not count when it came to a Temple board meeting ths evening. As the issue upon which I shall speak here was personnel-related so details will not be present here. The focus is, with most things in this world, me. ;)

(I wish I had not put that smily there, but this is set in stone, right?)

The issue involved a known individual and an unknown. My sense of how I would vote changed at least five times during the meeting, during which I spoke on a number of occasions. I am opinionated, decisive, and quick to judge. I came into the meeting knowing how I wanted to vote.

By the time the question was called, I was so uncertain that I asked that we take a five minute break for everyone to not discuss this. At the end of the five minutes we reconvened and I, physically knotted in my gut (which was telling me nothing) had to vote. The decision hurt me and matured me at the same time.

This is the first time in any of my various capacities as a member of various committees and boards voted without being confident in my decision. My gut is still twisting over this. I feel increasingly like life and my life at Temple in particular is the relelvant to the future. Meanwhile, I find it hard to get anything done at school or homework done for school because it all seems like irrelevant bullshit.

And so, in our modern American world with little wonder left in it, in a board meeting lacking any fire brimstone, or wilderness, a seventeen-year-old Jew came of age because of a personnel decision.