I count POSHing totals for the 116 boarding students at the Academy.
I count the 22 students in my House every night I am on duty.
I count the 3 hours between meat and dairy.
I count myself and (hopefully) 9 others in minyan every Shabbat.
We Jews like to count. When I turned thirteen I really embraced the whole idea of becoming an adult in the eyes of the Jewish community. Suddenly, I mattered. In my small congregation growing up, my service attendance was valued and encouraged. At camp, I remember having a debate about whether or not the Torah could count as the 10th for a minyan. We often needed to count some geese to reach that quorum of 10.
When I was in college I encountered Orthodox Judaism on my own terms for the first time. I struggled with the idea of not being counted in a minyan. I wanted to contribute to the community in a way that was meaningful to me. I didn't know how else to connect to prayer besides being counted in the community. At the same time, I admired the Orthodox community's devotion and serious approach to Judaism.
In recent years I've tried to stop counting so much. If I focus on how many more days until something, or how many hours until something is over, I lose something.
How do we focus on the present, when all we can seem to do is constantly countdown to something else?
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