This weekend is the beginning of the Jewish New Year 5779. We usher out the old by remembering our mortality and measuring our values against our behavior this last year. Were we kind, generous, thoughtful, respectful, and caring? is the world a better place for our having been here? Did we serve those we love and fulfill the promises we made to others? Did we make amends for our mistakes? Were we humble and hungry for growth and learning? Did we fully embrace both joy and loss? Are we better, wiser, and stronger for our experience? And what goals and values will we embrace this next year?

During these self-reflections we meet ourselves today. We take this time to explore love, loss, and change. We consider the difference each stop on our journey has made. And then we look ahead.

It reminds me of an uncharacteristic story about Franz Kafka. When we think him and his writings, it’s impossible to imagine the man having a simple, loving nature. There’s even an adjective named for him. “Kafkaesque” means, “marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity.”  So how does that fit with this true story about the man?

At the age of 40, Kafka was suffering with Tuberculosis and in his last year of life. During this time he took daily walks in a park near his home. One day he noticed a little girl weeping because she had lost her doll. As he joined in the search for the lost doll Kafka attempted to comfort her. He explained that the doll went on a journey. 

The girl was doubtful. To reassure her, Kafka added that he knew it was true because the doll had written him a letter. When the girl asked to see it, he said he would bring it to the park the next day and read it to her. So that evening he wrote a letter from the doll describing her travels, and how the doll was growing up and going to school. The letter said the doll loves the little girl even as she goes about living in her new world. 

Little by little the girl overcame her grief at losing her doll.

Kafka wrote a few more letters sharing the doll’s adventures. He decided the doll would fall in love and get married. Finally, he composed the last letter when the doll says goodbye. 

Then Kafka gave the little girl a new doll, which of course looked different from the original one that she lost. This new doll arrived with a note saying:

            “You may notice how different I am. My travels have changed me.”

Many years later, as a grown woman, the little girl found this note hidden in a crevice of the doll: “Everything that you love you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

I imagine Kafka facing his mortality when he came across the girl and her lost doll. As he struggled with his own grief he felt empathy for the girl and her loss. In an act of uncharacteristic compassion, he acted to comfort her, and in doing so, he comforted himself.

Sometimes when we look outside we see a mirror reflecting our own selves. Kafka’s message to the little girl are words of wisdom to her, to himself, and to us.

“You may notice how different I am. My travels have changed me.”

Source: Dora, Kafka's last companion.