I recently received a fun and unexpected gift when celebrating my birthday – a banjo.  I don’t know all that much about banjos, but I’ve been a guitarist for many years, so it seemed like the basic idea of playing the guitar and the banjo would be similar.  Taking my new banjo out of the case for the first time, my first thought was: “How do I tune this thing?”  So, I looked up the tuning scheme and dug out a familiar tool from my guitar case – a tuning fork.  Sure, there are all kinds of electronic tuning devices available for tuning string instruments, but I have always preferred the combination of my tuning fork and my ears.  This way, I figure I get a reliable tuning reference and a little ear training at the same time.  Anyway, I have owned this particular tuning fork for as long as I can remember; there is little need to replace such a simple and effective device. 

As I spent a little time getting familiar with my new banjo, I thought a bit more about the tuning fork; specifically, what would happen without it.  Inevitably, with no tuning reference, my instrument would gradually drift away from its state of tune until the music being played no longer sounded like that which the composer intended. It’s not a pretty thought; throughout the years as a music student and performer, I have more than once heard otherwise good performances compromised because of one or more poorly tuned instruments.  Such incidents were reminders that tuning references are necessary to counter the inevitable effects of time, stress, and nature on performer and instrument. Strings lose elasticity; weather, humidity, temperature, and barometric pressure expands, shrinks, and warps tone woods; tuning gears slip…such variables demand that instruments be regularly tuned to function correctly, some more than others.  For a quality piano, tuning perhaps once a year is enough; for a guitar, several tunings per playing session is typical.  Perhaps in this constant need for tuning is a lesson – what about us?  Do humans need to be periodically “tuned” as well?  And, if so, what is the “tuning” reference that we use for ourselves? 

You could accuse that of being a leading question, and you would be correct.  Still, I believe it is worth considering.  I suspect that most people could think of one or two things in their lives that could use some improvement, or “tuning”, to stick with our analogy.  Maybe it’s a good habit that one has become complacent in, like working out regularly or some sort of personal development.  Maybe it’s a bad habit that has been allowed to creep in, like excessive use of bad language or cutting corners on a healthy diet.  There are many possibilities.  For me, when something like that has surfaced in my daily life, it was never because I intended to become lazy or complacent.  It was something analogous to what happens with an instrument that slowly drifts out of tune; just something that surfaces over time, and seemingly before I knew it, a bad habit had become the norm.  A sort of “missing the mark”, rather than willfully bad behavior.

So, if this is happening, how does one go about tuning back up again? A simple and rather obvious truth about tuning instruments that seems relevant is, if you want to tune your instrument, you have to stop playing.  I can think of many times over the years when I would be playing my guitar, and could hear that something was a little bit off with my tuning.  However, in order to correctly identify which string had drifted, I had to stop playing and check each one individually. In line with this sort of thinking, the past weekend marked an event meant intended to address such “tuning” of the soul in the Jewish faith tradition, Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement.  Yom (Heb: day) Kippur (Heb. from the verb to atone), the highest holy day of the year in Judaism, is a day designated for prayer, fasting, special ceremonies, and a prohibition against work in order to encourage reflection on rectifying wrongs and reorienting lives.  I’m not Jewish, and likely don’t fully understand all of the nuances of Yom Kippur, but I believe there is a lot of wisdom in the idea of Yom Kippur; specifically, in the idea of intentional and dedicated time spent on considering the areas in which one may be falling short, and the ways one might make amendments.  To stick with the instrument analogy, to stop playing in order to better diagnose the source of faulty tuning. Perhaps in this is the wisdom of Yom Kippur – stepping out of the daily normal in order to look at things and identify what is really going on. 

For those of us who don’t observe Yom Kippur, how might this idea be applied?  My approach was to try and apply it in a way that I didn’t think would be difficult or take a long time.  At the same time, I knew that just saying I’ll think about it while catching up on my e-mails probably won’t get it done.  So, I came up with some ideas that would take me out of my normal daily routine and invite reflection.  A walk in the woods with no devices, a period of reflection in a quiet church, or even something like helping a neighbor or spending time on a cause I support. There seemed to be many possibilities. So, I chose one and tried it.

To use myself as an example, what did I find? During my period of reflection, I realized a financial habit that I have become lax in. Over the past several years, I have routinely supported a couple of charities and non-profits that work with causes that are important to me. However, in the course of several significant life changes over the past year or two, I have fallen out of the habit of doing so as regularly as I used to. So, I set new calendar reminders and made notes to help me reintegrate that habit back into my regular financial upkeep. I think this is a good example, because I never intended to stop supporting these organizations, and I really didn’t have a good reason to stop, other than I missed the mark on what used to be a good habit. And, if I had not taken the time to reflect on my habits, I may not have realized what had happened.

I haven’t played my new banjo all that much yet; it will likely be a bit more of a fall and winter project. When I do, though, I know that it will remind me of this personal lesson each time I take it out of the case; that is, if I want it to sound and function the way that its creators intended, it has to be tuned regularly. In a similar way, events like Yom Kippur, regardless of our spiritual affiliation, wisely remind us that we also need regular tuning in order to function the way that our creator intended.