when i was younger, i was upset at the anshei Knesset hagedolah for establishing set tefillah. the miforshim on the Torah say that the main point of tefillah is when one is in a time of need. Having halachos that require us to concentrate on the words we are saying leaves very little room (shma koleinu) for personal requests.
when i got older, i realized that i should be more thankful. often, i don't have what to ask for. sure, the usual good health, wealth etc. things are necessary, but when they are going smoothly, its impossible to feel desperate for them. feeling desperate is the only thing that causes sincerity, and sincere tefillah is the only real kind.
so i became thankful that we have arranged parts of tefillah for praise, and specific set requests for specific needs. I had something to concentrate on when i didn't seem to care about much else going on in my life. This helped bring me to have a connection with God during my davening, as opposed to just begging him for things when i needed them.
I was reminded of this during Selichos today. There was a paragraph in which the ending line was "Forgive is for our sins and answer us." apart from my problem of not forgiving myself for doing things i knew were wrong, (and therefore i feel awkward asking forgiveness from God) and not willing to admit that the other things (that i have forgiven myself for) were wrong in the first place, i also asked myself, "answer us about what? im not asking for anything. then i thought about the plurality of the sentence. that didn't really help much either, because i didnt really feel to strong of a communal spirit in my yeshiva. and even if i did, im not sure there would've been a mutual agreement as to what we were asking for....
avinu malkeinu relieved me a little bit, if not for the fact that i remembered the days in which "Hashem please answer me," and "zachreinu l'chayim tovim," were contradictory to me.
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