This very unique presidential primary season of 2016 made many of us pay more attention. Incidentally, we learned more about the very complicated formulas of primary math. If you thought electoral college was complicated, this is many times more so, because each party in each state can decide their own formula as to how to portion delegates based on votes cast. Does winner take all? Does winner take more after a certain percentage of votes won? Is it by district or by state? Are delegates bound or not? And what about the states’ superdelegates?

These complicated formulas for what should be a simple process, got me thinking about the way we count the Omer. The Talmud teaches us that we must count the days AND count the weeks. There are 49 days total in the Omer count, so that makes a total of 7 full weeks. So we count both the days and the weeks, for example: “Today is 13 days, which is one week and six days, to the Omer.”

Now there are good reasons for why we should count weeks as well. Biblically sourced reasons. But here’s a life-message as well. We count individual days, and we also count how those days fit into sets (i.e. weeks). How those individuals fit in and belong.

We’re close to graduation season now. Each individual can look back at their own four years (or however long they were here) and count their accomplishments, their goals reached, their own memories. But we also look back in terms of sets: the friends we’ve made, the clubs and groups we were involved with, the experiences we had with others. As part of a set.

So, it’s important (symbolically) to count both days and weeks, individually and collectively. (This is all the more meaningful once you explore the whole concept of personal character traits refined in the Omer count, how each trait is on its own and how it interplays as sets, but that’s a story for another time).

Thinking in terms of graduation, I thought of Rummikub. It’s a popular game made in Israel that’s played with colored numbered tiles. Tiles can only be laid out on the board if they belong to a set. Maybe it’s a set of colored sixes, or a six that fits in between a five and a seven. Those sets are all flexible and malleable. That six may fit in here now and then be part of a different set next move. During the course of four years, the chemistry of the group keeps changing. People graduate and others come in as freshman. Individual tiles keep joining new sets.

So looking back, in counting your sets – there can be a great many sets. People you studied with, people you played with, roomates and suitemates, people at Shabbos House. Friends from your first years, friends from your final years.

But count those sets. They help shape who we are and how we belong on the big board of life.