Yom Kippur solemn time to reflect on elusive goal of perfection

If you're like most people, you devote a lot of energy to the pursuit of personal perfection. You plan your schedule for maximum efficiency.

You clean your body every morning, doing what you can to cover the blemishes. You sculpt your hair, knowing that even one stray lock will make it a "bad hair day," and ruin the whole thing. You watch your words, cover your bases, park between the lines, smile when you can, and send cards for birthdays, all as part of your never-ending quest for that great American dream called "perfection."

Sadly, it never seems to work. You get stuck in traffic and waste your well-scheduled time. You dump gallons of chemicals onto your head, and you have a bad hair day anyway. Zits happen.

So you try harder. Maybe, you think, with the right planning, the right hair product, the right attitude and approach, everything can be just as it should be.

It never is.

It would be one thing, I suppose, if it were only in your quest for perfect hair and skin that you never succeeded. But if you're like most people, it goes far deeper.

You try to be as nice as you can, but sometimes an unkind word slips out anyway. You strive to be generous, but you know you could give more. You make magnificent New Year's resolutions, and you break every one of them.

So you try harder — even harder — to be perfect. And the harder you try, the more elusive the goal becomes.

Trying to be perfect takes a lot of work.

And this is one of the reasons that, on Thursday, Jews around the world will gather in synagogues to observe Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement. On this, the most solemn day of the Jewish year, we will stand in awe before God, individually and collectively making amends for our misdeeds.

Yom Kippur is a day of fasting in Judaism. Rather than worrying about creature comforts, we focus on the difficult work of atonement. We're supposed to atone for our sins every day, of course, but Yom Kippur is a time for us to focus on atonement with extra fervor.

It can be gut-wrenching. In Judaism, atonement involves not just prayers or mumbled apologies, but rather a specific five-step process, in which we 1. Own up to what we have done wrong; 2. Change our behavior; 3. Apologize to those we have wronged; 4. Compensate them for the harm we caused; and 5. Maintain these changes over the long haul.

Yom Kippur, in other words, is a day for Jews to reflect on how to become the best people we can be — on how to get as close as we can to that elusive goal called perfection.

For the most part, we won't be thinking about changing shampoos or the route we take through rush-hour traffic. Instead, done right, Yom Kippur is a day of deep reflection and introspection for us, a time to truly craft our moral, ethical and spiritual selves so as to become the kind of people we have learned God wants us to be.

Yes, I know — it won't work. It never does. Even after all our work on Yom Kippur, we still won't be perfect. But maybe it will help. Maybe, our atonement can bring us a little bit closer to fulfilling our dreams of perfection. Maybe our focus on self-transformation and self-betterment on this day can help us get closer to that lofty goal than anything else.

Being perfect is a lot of work. And on this Yom Kippur, as in the past, we Jews will strive in our own way to get it just right.

Rabbi Mark S. Glickman leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island and Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville. Readers may send feedback to faithcolumns@seattletimes.com