The process of teshuvah is never finished.
It is a lifelong journey, an ongoing striving to do better and to be better, to do more to help our fellow Man and to come closer to God.
Our Sages tell us that the creation of teshuvah preceded the creation of the world.
It is a process so powerful that it allows us to defy the laws of physics and suspend the linearity of time.
Through teshuvah, we can change ourselves so much that the misdeeds of our past are erased–in some mystical way–because the person who committed them no longer exists.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From “Re-Turning to God in the New Year,” as essay by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz