Finalize plans with the extended family? Check. Plan out the menu? Check. Order the meat? Check. Clean the house? Check. Polish the silver? Check. Put out the good china? Check. Find something for the kids to wear to services? Check. Run around for weeks on end until you’re too exhausted to lift your head? Check.

Every year it seems like we run around for weeks trying to get ourselves, our homes, and our children ready. We spend so much time arranging our lives, and mobilizing our families, all in anticipation for the High Holiday, or the High Holy Days. But what is it that we are getting ourselves ready for?

While we may know that the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are, respectively, the Jewish New Year, and the Day of Atonement, if you ask people what the holidays mean, you will get so many different answers. For many of us, these holidays are about family, about generations coming together to celebrate, to be in synagogue together, and to eat (yes, there’s almost always food involved).

The holidays are certainly about being together with loved ones, about sharing our traditions and passing them on from one generation to the next. But there is another theme to the holidays as well. In preparation for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in the midst of all of the cooking and cleaning, we must find the time to prepare ourselves as well.

Many communities have a wonderful selichot tradition. During the selichot service, they take the torahs out of the ark and change the covers of the torah from their year-round, colorful ones and replace them with the pure white covers they will wear for the high holidays. In addition, the silver breastplates, crowns, and pointers that hang from our Torah scrolls are all polished to prepare them for the holiest time of year.

This is a perfect metaphor for the High Holy Days. We often focus on the terrible sins we must make restitution for. But many of us don’t commit major sins. We are mostly good people — but we get tarnished. If you looked at us, you might say, “That person is all right, an upstanding citizen.” But we know we can do better; we just need a little polishing.

This is a time of introspection to figure out areas for improvement. Every year I notice the difference between the cleaning jobs on the pieces of silver. Some are meticulously polished, with every nook and cranny gleaming. Others only have a shine on the flat surfaces. This is the case with human beings as well. Some of us take the time to polish our souls during the High Holy Days; others simply go through the motions. Don’t waste your opportunity to once again become shiny and new.

Whatever your theology, the two days of Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur are fecund with meaning. These three days are a celebration of the creation of the world and our role within it. It is a perfect time to take, what the rabbis called, a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of our souls, or of our lives.  In this accounting, we ask ourselves if we are happy with the person we’ve become, if we are the person whom we’d like to be. If not, we ask ourselves how we can become better, how we become more of the person we’d like to see when we look at ourselves in the mirror. We treat ourselves in the same way we treat our homes, making sure we are spotless.

As we get ready for the high holidays, as we clean our homes, prepare our meals, let’s take the time to not only dress ourselves beautifully on the outside, but beautify ourselves on the inside. Take a moment, either in services or at home, to think about where you are at this moment, at the beginning of 5785. Then think about where you would like to be by the beginning of 5786.

May it be a happy, healthy and peaceful new year for us all.