I often joke with my best friend that nothing has changed.

That we are the exact same people we were when we met all those years ago, in dire circumstances, weeping and hopeless. 

He looks at me and says, deadpan, “No. We’re worse.” Though underneath, it’s about something larger, the circles we keep walking, the endless, yet mundane, spiral.

And we laugh. It’s our private joke. I don’t think more than three people in the universe could understand why it’s so funny. To the outside world, we’re clearly different. He’s a psychology student in Tel Aviv now, serious and responsible. I’m usually pacing through some foreign city; New York, Montreal, Rio, laughing on the phone with him while sipping cappuccino and ignoring my backache. To the naked eye, everything has changed.

And yet, underneath, the same fear. The same chaos. The same children inside us who were hurt, and who, in turn, hurt others. The same selfish impulses. The same pain. The same us.

But we are also not the same. Some might say we are even decent people now, from selfishness galore to acts of service, from lack of accountability to yearly payment plans.

I often tell him: “אני אוכלת סרטים” literally meaning  “I’m eating movies,” which is an Israeli slang expression for spiraling into grand, often unrealistic thoughts.
“Of course,” he replies. “What else would you do – think rationally?

But between the jokes –  the kind of laughter only two souls who’ve seen each other at their worst can share, he brings up one moment again and again. Not always. Only when the movies I’m eating have a particularly long run time. But it always stays with me after the call ends.

“When I met you,” he says, “you couldn’t look anyone in the eye.”

It grounds me in how much has changed. And how often I forget. How often I feel exactly the same.Then the next day, he’ll call and say, “I’m really obsessing over this problem…”
“What else is new?” I told him.

And a week later, I’ll say, “What is this – The year 2020 all over again?”
“Yes,” he teases. “You’ve learned nothing.”

There’s this pattern I keep noticing, one that I attribute to g-d, or whatever divine force keeps bringing me back to the same place. The same lessons. The same moments, albeit in different clothes. I dress more Scandinavian now, less like a kibbutznik. It appears to be the same show, disguised with new costumes, new actors, and new cities. And still, I recognize the stage. I recognize the ache.

The Jewish tradition has a name for this: ‘Tikkun’ —repair, fix.  The larger idea behind it is ‘Gilgul, ‘ the kabbalistic concept of soul cycles – or plainly, reincarnation. We are born again and again, and yet, it’s not punishment. It’s an opportunity. A chance to finish what we started. To come back wiser, or gentler, or maybe just a bit more willing to try, to do here what we came to do. And then, hopefully, to rest.
First, we repair ourselves. Then, in broader and wider circles – our families, our communities, the world.

We’re given new versions of old tests. The characters change, the setting shifts, but the invitation remains: Will you do a bit better this time?

‘Tikkun’ is the work our soul came here to do. In Pirkei Avot, we’re told: “It is not upon you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Over the past five years, I’ve started seeing my life this way – not as a straight line of progress, but as a spiral. Because healing isn’t linear. And neither is life.I used to think growth meant leaving things behind. The movie version of healing: closure, a sweeping montage, music swelling, fade to black.

But more and more, I find myself circling back to the same questions, the same wounds, the same prayers, the same griefs.

 I’ve often mistaken healing for erasure, as if growth means forgetting who we were, as if acceptance will romantically make me new and whole. Still, to me the healing process is the ‘Tikkun’ – not erasing the wound, but making it holy, elevating it, finding purpose in it. In the feeling, now gnawing at me, that maybe we were born cracked so that god can pour his light in. 

I think that for me it’s what it means to walk in ma’aglei tzedek  –  the phrase from Psalm 23, often translated as “right paths.”But in Hebrew – at least modern Hebrew, Ma’agal means circle. So that’s how I’ve always understood it. Always read it. Always felt it.

Not righteousness as a ladder to climb, or a path to walk – but as a circle. A cycle. A loop we walk over and over, slowly widening, each time with more wisdom. Each time with more humility. Each time a little softer, and with the grace of god –  each time a little more whole. 

It’s easy to think I haven’t changed. That I’m just circling the same drain, clinging to the same metaphors. But that’s not quite right. I think that, just as my friend, the now psychology student, I am wiser at times. We’re certainly older now. The white hairs came out this year, undeniable, like a new season arriving, whether I was ready or not.
Back when I met him, I thought, perhaps foolishly, that one day I would arrive. Today, I don’t know if I’ll ever “arrive,” whatever that is, or if it’s small moments, accumulating, times where we can breathe with no resistance. 

But I’m learning to find meaning in the returning. 

In the ache that repeats. In the desert soil, I now dared to visit. In that summer, that still haunts me, the one that held the brightest light and the darkest shadows. In the same lesson, but in nicer clothes. In the same joke that still makes us laugh.
And in the eyes I now meet without shame.