The grand themes of Rosh Hashanah--judgement, remembrance, awakening--have been heard already today. I'm too tired to capitalize them, even. Here is what I think:
"[you folks] spend about 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope, and you figure two weeks up here'll untie 'em for you." --Curly, "City Slickers"
"I can't believe that my last words to her were 'no foot longs'!" --Ned Flanders, "The Simpsons", 2000 Season
The Internet is fond of telling hit-by-a-cement-truck stories of how someone goes to Heaven without ever hearing from this friend or that one. I've read enough of them to be completely numbed to their bathos. Besides that, I have a time of year that serves the same purpose. These are the Days of Awe, wherein we are required to step back and look at life this last year--sort out regrets, redress grievances, reconnect here and there. It's a chance to get done, what needs doing but doesn't get the effort all the time, and also a chance to re-set the moral compass you use in the process--which leads us to agency.
"In philosophy and sociology, Agency is the capacity of an agent (a person or other entity) to act in a world." --Wikipedia
All year long, the constant fight is for control of our bodies, our environments, our identities, our budgets, and ourselves. There isn't much time--unless you HAVE a cliff to sit on or a dam to walk over--to admit that either some things are BEYOND control or that the controller we're using may not be the best. The Days of Awe are meant to accomplish the latter--to take the agent out of the game, if only for a few hours or days, and examine both it and the agent closely. It's the former--admission, then submission--that hits harder, I think. That all our faculties may not affect very much--it's tough to admit. *ahem* although we do tend to blame concepts like "The Economy" and "The Japanese", or scramble for "The Secret" that makes this all Not True, it is.
And for that alone, these Days deserve some Awe.