In an article in a recent The New York Times Magazine entitled "Does Your Language Shape How You Think," Guy Deutscher writes about a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, the Guugu Yimithirr. He explains that while English speakers use "egocentric coordinates," using our physical selves as the reference-point to describe the space around us, pointing left, right, in front, and behind us, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker uses "cardinal directions" - fixed geographic directions, north, south, east, and west - even in intimate spaces. "For example," Deutscher writes, if they want you to move over in the car to make room, they'll say move a bit to the east.'" He continues,

"If you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant."

This awareness of the transience, even irrelevance, of the self, is a very Jewish idea. A Hassidic saying teaches that in each individual's pocket, at all times, there should be a little slip of paper that reads: anokhi afar va'efer - I am earth and ashes. This is a reminder that we are not at the center of the universe, that we are but a speck in a wide world, and that we should learn to speak and think accordingly, like the Guugu Yimithirr, in cardinal directions, more aware of how ultimately insignificant we are. And generating this awareness is one of the primary purposes of the High Holidays.