Today at sundown marks the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is the the beginning of a time of reflection in the Jewish faith called aseret yamei teshuva, or ten days of penintence; Rosh Hashanah is not just about asking forgiveness from God for the things we’ve done wrong in the past year, but about seeking out and apologizing directly to those we’ve harmed. It’s the time of year to reflect upon how we’ve been doing with regard to repentance (teshuva), prayer (tefillah) and charity (tzedakah).

But what do those things really mean, as we apply them to our lives? The idea of repentance isn’t just about apologizing and being forgiven, it’s about strengthening community, about trying to live a life of righteousness. It’s about how you make your life have meaning outside of yourself, every single day, about the kind of person you strive to be — not just on Rosh Hashanah, but every day of the year. And you don’t have to be Jewish to find value in the spirit of what Rosh Hashanah means.

While I am not Jewish myself (or at least, not that my Polish Holocaust-survivor grandparents would ever admit), our family belongs to the Unitarian Universalist church, and one of the things we Unitarians value is teaching our children the core positive values of all faiths — in part because we believe that if we raise our youth to see the similarities between us rather than the differences, and focus on the positive things that bind us rather than those which divide us, we are doing our small part to help build a more unified community in our neighborhoods, our cities, and the world.

So as I was driving my son to school this morning, Rosh Hashanah was on my mind. How am I living my life in a positive way, what can I do every day, in even my smallest interactions with others, to help make others’ lives better? How can I think outside the bubble of myself and my immediate loved ones, to how my actions impact other people?

One small thing I’ve been doing for many years now is to buy the coffee order of the person behind me in line at the Starbucks drive-through. I do this at random times, usually a couple times a month. Many years ago, when my now-14-and-12-year-old daughter and son were small fry, someone randomly did this for me at the drive-through. It happened to be a day when I was feeling very overwhelmed about the choice I’d made at that time of my life to be a stay-at-home mom for a few years. My kids had been having a cranky morning, I was pregnant with their sister, I was tired, I was sick of going to playgroups and playing with blocks and fingerpainting, and I was generally feeling resentful of my own choice to give up a high-paying career to raise my kids through their early years. I’d lost sight, in that moment, of the bigger picture, that this was a brief moment in the history of my life, in which I had decided to sacrifice a corporate career path for the sake of being there every minute of every day to raise and nurture these children who were now squawking and fighting ungratefully in the back seat of our minivan.

I felt, in that moment, uncharacteristically sorry for myself and completely bereft, so I decided to make my morning better by splurging on a decaf soy latte for myself and kid-sized vanilla steamers for the ungrateful wretches sitting behind me holding hands and sniffling because I’d lost my temper and yelled at them to knock it off. Nothing brings solidarity to siblings like a mommy in a pissy mood, and they were in that moment, I’m sure, quite convinced that their mother was mean, crazy, or possibly both. When I pulled up to the window with my debit card, the cashier smiled at me and said, “No charge. The woman in front of you paid for your order, and said to tell you and your kids to have a great day.”

Baffled, I looked at the car ahead of me as the driver pulled away. My foul mood evaporated like Seattle morning fog. I didn’t know that woman, and I never had a chance to thank her; she drove off quickly without looking back. She never knew how much that small gesture she made meant to me on that particular day, at that moment when I was feeling so blue. But I paid it forward by paying for the order of the man behind me that day, and I’ve never forgotten how that single act of kindness completely shifted my mood and my outlook when I really needed it.

So since that day, I’ve made a habit, at least a couple times a month, of doing for others what that kind woman did for me on that day, by paying for the order of the person behind me when I’m going through the Starbucks drive-through. Often, I’ll choose a mother with young children to do this for, because with five kids of my own I know what it feels like to struggle through those days of towing kids around. But I’ll also very often choose someone who just looks stressed out: a businessman, impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, wanting to get on his way; an older woman who looks (in my overactive imagination, at least) a little sad and lonely.

There are countless ways to show others a little kindness and compassion, even if you don’t want to spend money doing so. I try to make a habit of always looking people in the eye, greeting them with a smile, asking them how their day’s going. This goes especially for people who work in any kind of service industry — your barista, your cashier at the grocery store or movie theater concession stand, the teller at your bank. People often treat people working in these jobs as dispensable, invisible, there only to serve their immediate needs. Sometimes they’ll look up in surprise that I’m asking how their day was. Most times, they’ll smile and seem happier because of being asked.

When I’m at a film festival, I try to remember to consistently thank the volunteers as often as I can. The volunteers holding the door open, the volunteer scanning my badge, the volunteers queuing people up in line. They’re all there giving their time, and it’s such a little thing to show them some appreciation by saying, “Thank you for volunteering. I really appreciate you being here.”

Of course, there are countless ways in which you can give back to others and to your community. Volunteer to teach at your church, if you have one. Serve a meal at a soup kitchen, or sort canned goods at a food bank. Donate food to a food bank — and not the crappy expired kidney beans from the back of your pantry, but a whole grocery bag or two full of canned goods, peanut butter, rice, beans. Gather friends together to make 100 nutritious sack lunches, then go downtown and hand deliver them to homeless people — and be sure you include two sandwiches per bag, and a bottle or two of water. Bring extra water, too — it’s not that easy to find clean, free drinking water in most urban downtown areas.

Hold the door open for someone who’s not expecting it. Offer to help when you see someone struggling. Instead of rolling your eyes in exasperation at the toddler throwing a tantrum in the checkout line, make eye contact with his mom or dad, who are probably feeling embarrassed and crappy and wanting to strangle their offspring; smile, tell them it’s okay, and that it gets better. Because it does. Order more than you can eat when you go out, and before you start eating, box up half of it and give it to someone in need on your way out. If you don’t like to give spare change to panhandlers, just look for someone who looks like they really need a meal, and buy them a big, juicy gyro or burger or a healthy burrito with beans and rice and meat. Because no one should go hungry, no matter what bad choices they’ve made in life.

I can’t say I do all these things every single day, but I do try to do many of them consistently, and to encourage my children to do them as well. I learned compassion from my parents, my uncle-the-priest, my aunt, my grandmother, my great-grandmother. I was raised with the value that kindness to others is a virtue, service to others its own reward. And we work hard to teach our kids compassion for others, and to look at things from the other person’s perspective.

Maybe that big kid you think is a bully just feels bad because other kids are scared of him and no one will play with him, and so he strikes out first as a defense mechanism. What would happen if you tried smiling at him, saying hi, asking him if he’d like to play? Maybe that girl who’s being mean to you has a lousy home life, or her mother’s sick, or her family is about to lose their home. What would happen if you tried just being really nice to her, no matter how she acts to you? It’s hard for most people to continue to be mean to someone who consistently treats them with kindness and respect. Thank the cashier as we leave the store. Say please and thank you to the waitress taking your order, and look them in the eye when you ask for what you want. Hold the door open until that family gets through it, please. That lady dropped her bag and her groceries are spilling all over the parking lot, let’s stop what we’re doing and help her. Be kind to others. Don’t look the other way from someone in need. Turn the other cheek. Let go of anger and resentments. And so on.

Trying to live your life by thinking consistently about how your actions impact others is, to me, the spirit of what Rosh Hashanah is all about. We cannot help but do wrong in our lives, because we are human, and to be human is to err. But we can try to be aware of this, to acknowledge honestly that we pretty much always have something to repent for: a harsh word when a kind one would have been a better choice; starting — or continuing –a fight on Twitter with a colleague; snapping at our partner; holding onto resentments; failing to be grateful for the myriad kindnesses others show to us.

But if we all carried the spirit of Rosh Hashanah with us, every single day and not just once a year, how much better could we make our communities, the lives of our friends, the lives of our neighbors and co-workers, and even the stranger in line behind us at Starbucks? If you chose to try to live every day being positive and happy and mindful of others, who knows how much that spirit of kindness and community might pay forward to the lives of others, in ways that you’ll never know?

Shana Tova, my friends, and especially to any among you to whom I may have given cause to think me an enemy. May your days be blessed with light and laughter, and may you pay that forward to all and sundry that you meet.

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