Yom Kippur has been very challenging for me in the past, and this year I came to understand why, and to begin to move into a new stage. I think that it is challenging for me because it emphasizes endings, and because it emphasizes the impossibility of finding closure. I used to hate it because I interpreted the liturgy and ritual structure as actually intending for people to feel at some point that they have expiated, via perfection in repentance and intense self-beration. As someone who tends to be obsessive and a little self-hating anyway, this was a recipe for disaster. I ultimately walked out of a Yom Kippur meditation service a few years ago because I was feeling so paralyzed by the process.
I've also had similar trouble with appreciating nature, as disconnected the two themes seem to be. Three things that I really loved at one point were autumn leaves, snow, and waterfalls. And I live in an area where those three things are all plentiful. But I have tended to go in and out of periods in which I find myself staring at beautiful landscapes and thinking "Why can't I appreciate this the way I once did? Why doesn't it 'click'?" And the longer I stay there, and the harder I try, the worse it gets. And, of course, Yom Kippur is in the fall, so I tended to have this double dose of "I'm somehow unable to be appropriately affected by my experience." (Even Rosh Hashana has some of the same feeling, because I felt like, "This is the New Year, I am supposed to feel like I am transitioning, like I am ready for the new and able to leave the old behind, but I just can't get there. " I guess there's a reason that religious ceremonies and compulsions are both called "rituals.")
