Shabbat Vayigash

Ask any child their age and the response will invariably be, more information than you bargained for. “Five and a half”, “Six and three quarters” or “almost seven”. Ask an adult their age, and the answer becomes murkier. Some can’t recall the actual year or date in which they were born. Some round-down their age by a few years or so and some are even offended at the thought of such an inquiry. For children, the older they become, the more they can partake in life’s activities. The opportunity to stay up later, which for children means obtaining more time, is the ultimate luxury. Going to bed early however, is the ultimate punishment. For teenagers, more time is tantamount to more freedom. They can’t wait to be 16 to drive, 18 to graduate and 21 to….well you get the idea.
For a child, being asked “How old are you?” is an opportunity to tell you what they are able to accomplish presently, for an adult, being asked “How old are you?” is an opportunity to reflect on what one has accomplished in the past. It is a reminder of time passed and inevitably the subconscious question of “what have I indeed done with my time on earth?”. The question of “how old are you?” activates a stimuli to which everyone has a personal response.
In this week’s Parasha, Yaaqov reminds us all of how we are to truly quantify our lives. Paroh meets Yaaqov, the father of the elusive Yosef, for the first time, and the Torah records Paroh’s first question to Yaaqov. “How many are the days of the years of your life?”. He inevitably asks Yaaqov “How old are you?”. Yaaqov's response is both quantitative and qualitative, and in essence, teaches Paroh a life lesson. He tells him that he is 130 years old, and that he has had a hard life. It is not the years of one’s life that should be taken into account, but the quality of the days.

As stated in Parashat Bereshit, The Universe was created, on a day to day basis: Day one to day seven. Though we have no real concept of how much time creation took chronologically, God wants us to use days as the units of time when referring to creativity and being a creative and growing human being and not years or decades. (The Torah does however use years when describing the age of a person who has passed on, but this event is the end of a human being’s creative process.)

When someone asks you your age, though it is easier to quantify it in years, for oneself, life should be looked at on a day by day basis. Alcoholics Anonymous strongly encourages its participants to count the time of "recovery" on a day by day basis, and a recovering addict can recite the exact amount of days he or she has been sober no matter how many years have passed. The reason for this is that each day of recovery is a struggle and a challenge in and of itself and success should evaluated on easy to handle morsels. This is a good approach for taking on life day by day because sometimes we have great days and sometimes we have not so great days, the bad days last only 24 hours and tomorrow is a new day which one can progress and be even better. I would like to wish my dear wife a happy 2,546th day anniversary.