For the past few years, I’ve conducted a life review at the start of summer. It began during a difficult time in my life after I saw an episode of Northern Exposure where the Jewish doctor is reminded by a spirit of the importance of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur practices. In these traditions, people spend ten days considering their lives and actions in the last year, fast for a day as penance, and then begin the new year with resolutions to improve. The practice is timed with the Jewish Lunar calendar and since I decided to begin the practice in early June of that year, I timed it with the summer solstice.

I began the practice during a stressful time in my life and the results were immediate. Many people will say, “Why put yourself through an annual life review and moral accounting?” My response is that I can change very few things in this world, but one of the few things I can try to change is myself. Since what goes around comes around with some regularity, if I seek to improve who I am and how I treat others, my life will improve as well.

When I started the practice, family members close to my wife and I were having health crises and she and I were burdened and feeling stress from the work and worry. Our relationship was strained and I was irritable and hard-headed. As I began the life review, both my wife and I began to relax and by the end of the ten days we were getting along much better. There were some bumps along the way, but at the end of the process, our relationship had improved and we began the summer with a much better attitude toward each other and the challenges we faced. To our good fortune, the health of our loved ones also improved.

Each year, before the summer solstice, I spend ten days considering my failures and successes of the last twelve months and ways that I can improve in the future. The process is enlightening, because I see patterns and relationships that extend from my early childhood through my life now. Each year, it seems that many of my faults re-occur, changing slightly from the previous year.

I am learning to prioritize the biggest challenges and work on those. At the same time, I see my challenges as not just within me, but in the circumstances I enter into. I know that some things trigger my weaknesses and failings, especially when I am tired. If I can avoid those triggers and avoid dealing with challenging circumstances when I am tired or late at night, I can avoid many pitfalls.

I am part of a twelve step group and I believe the moral accountability of the twelve steps are central to a happy life. It is one of the most important ways that I can control my personal fate because I am seeking to control what I give out—what I give to others that I will receive in the future. If no one else ever does a moral accounting, it doesn’t matter to me—it’s important that I do it, because that gives me control of who I am and what I can be.

The more I improve how I treat others the more my life will improve. I know this from past decades, when I carried out the first real moral accounting of myself during my psychosis. It was a life changing process that I remain grateful for today.

After my ten days of life review, usually beginning on June 10th, I fast from sunset to sunset the day before summer solstice, making resolutions to try to improve. I break my fast around nine-thirty at night, just as the sun as sets, with a few simple snacks before I go to bed.

The next day, on the solstice, my wife and I have a meal celebrating the good things we have in our life together. This year we will open a Pilsner brewed a few months before, with seasonal food and gratitude for receiving these gifts of the bountiful Earth.

It is a time of thankfulness in the abundance of early summer, especially this year. After a couple of years of personal struggles and losses in our circle of family and friends, new beginnings with promises of happier times are happening. Like the sleeping Earth reawakening in the spring, our lives once again have the promise of new life, just as so many times in the past our struggles were followed by renewal and joy. All the while I struggle as a terribly imperfect person, seeking most of all to return the profound gifts of life and love I have received throughout my life.