The World Ends Today

By: Noah A., Beth Tfiloh Dahan High School Senior

The world ends today.

The world ended last Friday, when I received my acceptance letter from Yeshiva University. 

The world ended the Friday before, when I met new people and made new friends at a convention in Connecticut.

The world ended yesterday, and the world will end tomorrow.

Each and every day, the world ends, and each and every day after, the world begins anew. Every day a new world is formed, and the world you knew before ends entirely, because without the experiences of today, the world of tomorrow would be pretty much the same. The world ends whenever you meet someone, whenever you learn a new idea, whenever you visit a new place.

Every single day the Shacharit (morning prayer) service mentions how God “renews in his goodness on every single day the works of creation.” This implies that each day is a new creation, and the world we knew before is completely gone, merely a memory. God gives us a new gift each day of not just a new day, but a whole new world. 

So today, December 21, 2012, when the world ends, I doubt it will end in the way some people will have you believe. No solar flare, no meteor shower, no neutrinos melting the core of the earth, no mutant planet colliding with ours, no alien race invading. Rather, there will be a new experience, a new song, a new friend, a new place visited, a new dish your wife cooks for Shabbat, a new article your husband finds in the Times, or a new project your child brings home from school, something gained or something lost, which will end the world as you knew it, and will begin again. You won't notice it, but if all we ever do in life is wait for the end of the world, for an Earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes, and everything else R.E.M. predicts, well then, you've missed whole new worlds and the constant ending and rebirth of the world.

The world ends today. Make sure it ends on a high note.