Yom Kippur, 5775

A year ago, a friend introduced me to a computer game called 2048. The game uses a 4x4 grid and you play by using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move all the tiles in the grid to one side. Each tile is equal to a power of 2 – 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. If you strategically combine enough tiles of equal value, to make a tile of a higher value, you eventually earn the 2048 tile, and win the game. What makes the game challenging though, is that every time you move a tile, there is another 2 or 4 tile added to a random place on the board. This means that the board will quickly fill up with new tiles unless you can remove some by combining them.

It didn’t take long for me to become hooked. I love strategy and logic games and soon found myself playing on my phone while riding the subway, on my tablet before work, or on my computer when I really should have been doing homework. I quickly developed strategies that helped me earn higher and higher tiles. And soon enough, I was teaching others my strategies.

But then something funny happened.

Over the summer, the season when most rabbis and rabbinical students do a lot of reading to find material for High Holy Day sermons, I was explaining my strategy for 2048 and I noticed that the things I was saying  to friends started to sound familiar. It dawned on me then, that the approach I had to 2048 could also apply to one of the hardest parts of Yom Kippur.

Therefore, I now give to you: “Rachel’s winning strategy for the 2048 game” also known as “7 things to remember when saying ‘I’m Sorry.’”

1.      Coasting might work for a while but at some point you’re going to get stuck

The first step to winning 2048 is to choose a corner that is always going to hold your highest tile. That way, the tile that is supposed to eventually equal 2048 isn’t moving all around the board when you’re ready to combine it. When the game first starts, novices tend to be a little bored and simply hold down an arrow key, pushing every new tile to one side of the grid. But when they do that, they always find that their strategy stops working sooner rather than later.

The same is true for saying “I’m sorry.” For most of us, this is not a phrase that comes easily. We tend to think that admitting our own imperfections opens us up to weakness. Saying “I’m sorry” makes us vulnerable, and that scares us. So we avoid it. We continue on as before, letting our mistakes pile up, unacknowledged. Eventually, the pile grows to enormous proportions. No longer easily hidden, its presence weighs us down. Our unclaimed mistakes paralyze us. We are unable to move forward in our jobs, our communities or our relationships because all anyone can see is the pile of blunders that became a mountain of sins and follows us everywhere we go.

2.      Success depends on how you handle the randomness of life

When playing 2048, you might have the most thought-through strategy, you could be convinced it’s going to work, and then, the game give you a tile that you didn’t want in a place that destroys your whole plan. But the game still goes on.

We don’t set out to make mistakes. Most of them come because we didn’t think things through enough, or there was simply no right answer. Nevertheless, just because we didn’t aim to make a mistake doesn’t mean we don’t need to take responsibility for it. We can have the best intentions, and still break promises, hurt those we care about or mishandle a situation. There’s no undo button in 2048 or in life. We cannot go back to a point where the error doesn’t exist. Instead, we need to recognize the situation, understand its effect, and find the best way to address it. Only then can we rediscover balance on the board or in our lives.

3.      Sometimes you need to back up to go forward

When the 2048 grid starts to fill, sometimes it becomes easier to focus on the top tile in the second column rather than the bottom column in the first column. This means that the arrangement of the tiles waiting to be combined needs to be reversed in order to properly feed into your new organizational pattern. So now, instead of sending new tiles to the bottom of the board, you are sending them to the top.

We don’t always see our mistakes as we’re making them. They only come to our attention when their effects ripple out to the rest of our lives. Apologizing for the ripples isn’t enough. We need to go back and identify the source. We must ask ourselves: What could I have done better? In that way, not only are we able to take responsibility for our mistakes and their effects, but we also are able to recognize situations in which we might err again and avoid making the same mistake twice.

4.      Sometimes you need to take the indirect route

Most of the time, it is easiest to combine the lowest value tile on the board with a similar one. However, every once in a while the tiles are arranged to give you the opportunity to focus on a higher value tile instead. When this happens, always go for the higher value. You will almost always find that when you do the lower tile finds its partner in the process.

Similarly, when going about the process of teshuva we tend to start with our smaller offenses, slowly building up the courage to apologize and repent for the bigger ones. Still, there are times when the opportunity to address some of our more grievous mistakes presents itself. These opportunities might come out of the blue and catch us completely by surprise. When in this situation we can retreat and make the necessary mental and emotional preparations for our apology, or, we can embrace the unexpected chance and say “I’m sorry” right then and there. Most times, addressing the big problem helps to solve all the little ones along the way. It might be exhausting. It might be uncomfortable. But it’s worth it.

5.      When things start to get overwhelming, take a moment to stop and think

There’s no clock on 2048. So when things aren’t going the way you planned and the grid starts to fill up, it is okay to pause, look at the whole board, and find another strategy that might work.

In life, there is a clock—time is always passing, but saying “I’m sorry” is a process. And no matter how much we plan, how much we rehearse, how much we imagine possible outcomes, sometimes life brings the unexpected. We have cannot predict other people’s reactions. We might not know the depth of the pain we have caused. When we finally do say “I’m sorry,” there is a chance that the response will surprise us. If that happens, when that happens, take a step back. Try to understand where the other person is coming from. Their reaction is proportional to their hurt. We must try to understand the whole situation, empathize with those whom we’ve hurt, reevaluate, and then continue the process of apologizing.

6.      If you fail, you can try again

Despite thinking, analyzing and strategizing every move in 2048, eventually the board always fills up and we lose the game. But 2048 isn’t something you play once, lose, and never play again. There is always a “new game” button in the top right corner of the screen.

Life isn’t like that, we only have one shot here on earth but when we wake up each morning we do have another opportunity to make things right. Sometimes, the people whom we’ve offended are not ready to hear an apology. They’ll brush us off, or get angry at the idea, or even avoid putting themselves in a situation where an apology might be offered. When that happens, we must wait until they are ready. Apologies aren’t only given, they are also received. Just because we are ready to apologize, does not always mean that they are ready to forgive. Therefore, we must wait for them. We cannot forget that we made a mistake. We cannot say to ourselves “at least I tried” and never try again. We must find new opportunities to apologize, opportunities when our sincerity is ready to be heard.

7.      When you reach your goal, there’s always another one

A feature added to 2048 after its initial release is that now, after you’ve won and reached the 2048 tile, the game doesn’t end. You can continue and try for the 4098 tile or the 8196 and beyond. Winning does not mean that you are done.

If attending Yom Kippur services year after year teaches us nothing else, it’s that there is always another sin to atone for. Sins that we’ve committed ourselves, or as a community, or sins that we watched others commit but didn’t interfere. We are only human, we make mistakes, more than we care to admit. It is not enough to apologize for one and stop there. Today is about apologizing for all our sins, those that are obvious and those that are not. We spend all of Elul and the first ten days of Tishrei thinking hard about all of the sin that we’ve committed, so that today, we are prepared to honestly and sincerely tell all those whom we’ve wronged, human or divine, “I’m sorry.”

May each of us feel prepared enough and strong enough to truly say “I’m sorry.”

My each of us find the opportunity for apologies.

And may each of our apologies be heard.