I grew up in the shadow of the Twin Towers.

Growing up in that part of Manhattan, you could see them from so many places. They were simply there, these two enormous structures rising above everything else.

And when I was a kid, I had a special opportunity.

One of the chief engineers of the World Trade Center was a member of my father’s synagogue, and he gave me a private tour.

I remember going up to the top.

But strangely, that is not my most vivid memory.

What I remember is standing at the bottom and looking straight up.

The repeating pattern of the outside of the building seemed to continue forever.

And then, almost impossibly, there was another one; there were two!

For a child, the scale was simply beyond anything I could comprehend. Maybe for an adult too.

They seemed greater than anything.

Stronger than anything.

Mightier than anything.

And although I probably would not have used the word when I was five, they seemed as permanent as permanent can be.

As Rosh Hashanah began this year, we marked 25 years since September 11, 2001.

And perhaps one of the lessons of that terrible morning was something we already knew intellectually, but didn’t really know in a visceral way:

Nothing, nothing is indestructible.

Not our sense of security as Americans or as Jews.

And in these last 25 years, it’s become almost impossible to look away from how fragile the world is.

Because now we kind of carry the whole world around with us — all the time.

All of human knowledge.

You wake up in the morning. 

You reach for your phone.

And before you have even gotten out of bed, you know about an earthquake on the other side of the world, an antisemitic incident somewhere, another war, another mass shooting, and three other things you were apparently supposed to be worried about that you did not even know existed before you went to sleep.

And I understand why so many people have said to me:

“Rabbi, I just stopped watching.”

“I don’t read the news anymore.”

“I’m totally off social media.”

“It’s just too much.”

Because I feel it too.

I wish I could now tell you that I have discovered some great spiritual answer to all of this.

Actually, what I have been doing is much more mundane.

Recently, someone sent me one of those articles: The Ten Things You Can Do to Live Longer.

You know these articles.

Get at least 7-9 hours of quality sleep to reset your nervous system.

Keep a consistent bedtime schedule to support your body’s natural circadian rhythm. (That one has really not been working for me.)

Expose yourself to at least 10 minutes of sunlight within the first 30 minutes of waking up.

Eat .8 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. (That’s a bit of a range which can add even more stress.)

Eat balanced meals every 4 hours to prevent blood sugar crashes that trigger cortisol spikes.

By about item six, I was starting to worry that the stress of not accomplishing all these things was actually going to be the thing that would shorten my life.

But one suggestion stayed with me:

Take a walk in the morning.

So I’ve been trying to do that more.

And we are fortunate. We live in a beautiful area. There is........

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