City Slickers was a 1991 movie starring Billy Crystal as an almost 40-year-old Mitch Robbins, struggling with a mid-life crisis. His solution is to sign up, along with friends Ed and Phil, for a two-week cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado. In one fabled scene, Phil confesses he feels like his life is over and Mitch tells him not so. Mitch reminds him how, when they were kids playing ball and the ball got stuck in a tree, they’d yell, “Do over.” He concludes, “Your life is a do over. You got a clean slate.”
The do over is nothing new. When the Israelites were preparing to celebrate the second anniversary of the Exodus from Egypt, a number of them were ineligible to perform the Passover ritual. They brought their case to Moshe, saying it wasn’t right for them to miss out on this communal event just because they were ritually impure. God responds by establishing the 14th of Iyar, thirty days after Passover, as Pesach Sheini, or the Second Passover, allowing them a second chance (Num. 9:6-13). In other words, a do over. We all deserve the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start anew.
Said to Myself 
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