The Lost and Found Tourist in Iceland

On Wednesday while driving in the Mountains north of Los Angeles, I heard an interesting story on the news which took place last weekend with a tourist to Iceland. The tourist ended up joining in the search for a missing woman after a member of her bus party went missing, and after many hours of a huge search was able to help track the woman down when she realized it was herself they were looking for.

The woman was declared missing from a party touring the Eldgja volcanic region in south Iceland after getting off the party's bus to freshen up. She had hopped off the bus briefly, and changed her clothes - and her fellow travelers did not recognize her when came back on the bus.

Soon a search began for the missing woman along with a description of what she looked like. When the details of the missing person were first issued, the woman reportedly didn't recognize it as being her own description and unwittingly joined the search party for herself.

It was only after an all night search operation involving around 50 people, that the 'missing woman' eventually realized she was the source of the search and informed police of the situation.

When I heard this story I realized that besides the obvious practical lessons from this story there are also some powerful spiritual messages that can be taken from this story.

Life is a journey, and during this final Hebrew month of the year, the month of Elul, we traditionally spend time reflecting on how we are doing in our journey, recalibrating our GPS, contemplating our accomplishments and direction, and strengthening our resolve for our move forward.

This means that during this month, we are taking a look at who we really are, who we would really like to be, and what is it going to take for us to get there. As we busy ourselves with this process we need to remind ourselves who we are looking at. Are we defining ourselves and our direction solely by our external trappings and needs, or are we seeking to connect with our true inner self and integrate our lives with our core Jewish identity and values.

Perhaps the above story of the lost and found tourist in Iceland is a reminder that as we go through this search and review process in preparation for the Jewish New Year, we shouldn’t get caught up in defining our life and its purpose based on the external trappings alone, as these change and can do so quickly, and all too soon we can get lost and find it hard to connect with who we want and ought to be. Rather, our focus needs to be on connecting and expressing our inner self with our actions, as our spiritual actions are not just enduring, but lend a sense of meaning and purpose to the many facets of our lives.

It may seem hard, but in truth it isn’t as challenging as it seems, as we are told in this week’s Torah portion of Ki Tetze, that as soon as we seek to take on our challenges in life we are already on a higher footing and are much more likely to succeed. Our job is to get the process going and begin initiating this change and direction.

So in the final weeks of the Jewish year I hope that we all succeed in finding the tourist within us, and doing this without any major search parties. Its not as far off as it may seem, and syncing our actions and lives in tandem with our true identity is but a step away. Just look within yourself and you will find who you are pretty quickly.

Shabbat Shalom

Yisroel