One day while sitting on the therapist’s couch they’ll ask me to tell them a story about who I am and how I got to be in the place I am.
I’ll smile and tell them to sit back and enjoy The Hero’s Journey and then I’ll launch into a tale that will have a beginning and a middle but no end…yet.
Some took what they saw in a post about a restoration of equilibrium and came to conclusions there but will have missed the post about Changes though that won’t tell the tale either.
I think one of my favorite recent posts is Was It A Total Eclipse Of Reality?
Can’t tell you if it is just because I was ready for a change and that one hit the spot or if there is something else.
Might be because the Springsteen quote I shared the other day feels prescient in so many ways.
“Everything dies, baby, that’s a factBut maybe everything that dies some day comes back”
It Is Written On My Heart
Decades ago a girl told me she would never be the first to say she loved someone and that her mother told her never to cry in front of men.
I told her I know things and that some end up written on my heart and carved into my soul. She though it romantic back then though who could say what it would be seen as today. One can be consider the love of a life and then life can have its way and things change or so I have heard.
What hasn’t changed for me is that Emerson quote is at the root of who I am. I trust my instinct to the end and beyond. Some might say that has caused me more pain than good but I am not sure I accept that.
The Hero’s Journey isn’t at the end and it is not even clear if it is at the middle.
I bought those shirts just before I left for a business trip to Dallas in 2007.
They are one of two pairs I picked up so that I would have something to lounge in when I wasn’t giving presentations to groups of people I had never met before in person.
I saved the map of DFW the car rental gave me from that trip because I knew it was going to change my life.
Don’t ask me how or why I knew, just accept that instinct made it clear to me that I was stepping into an adventure and that if I chose to cross the river things would change.
Those shiny shorts are the other pair I mentioned above, felt a bit like a superhero in them which I suppose makes sense for a guy who says this was part of The Hero’s Journey.
Technically I didn’t have to hold onto them because they aren’t part of a superhero costume nor do they offer any superpowers that I am aware of.
But they have good and important memories tied to them and that has been enough. That is what I told Johnny when I shared that letter in the prior post, we all hold onto something that feels like it brings us luck.
Sometimes what you believe is the most important thing you have got because outside influences are quick to pounce on you and try to push you into accepting things that may not work for who and what you are.
Dreams Deferred Or Let Go Of
That’s 25 year-old me with the fanny pack listening to one of the paratroopers who liberated the Old City in ’67 talk about what that was like.
What it meant to be among the first Jews to wander through Jerusalem and see the Kotel since it was lost in ’48.
That guy was single and was thinking hard about whether he would return to the states.
I remember sitting at a cafe in Jerusalem listening to this Jewish girl from Scotland tell me how American I looked because I wore my baseball cap backwards.
I can still see the look on her face when I told her I needed her to speak Hebrew because her accent was so thick I couldn’t understand her English. Took her a moment to realize I was teasing her.
Sometimes I wonder how I didn’t take that moment to make aliyah and how I didn’t realize it was going to mean it was a dream deferred if not one I would have to let go of entirely.
Would have added some drama if I could have said I made all these decisions while listening to Sarit Hadad sing כשהלב בוכה.
But that song came out six years after that trip so I can’t say it was a missed opportunity. If you need the English translation you can find it here.
Worth noting Danny Gordis reminded me of this song in a recent post he wrote.
Also worth noting I remember being the sole American born employee at an Israeli company I worked for and how one of my colleagues told me how at first I only sort of got the emotion in the song but they thought it grew upon me.
Come to think of it I don’t think it was that long before that trip to Texas I mentioned above which came after I left the Israeli company and went to work for a different one.
And on a random side note I came across a short clip of me trying to figure out how to make a video from November of 2003.
I need to take a moment to figure out how to convert the file. Not sure if it is going to work so I’ll offer two versions.
How Many Ideas Can You Insert Into One Blog Post
Consider that a rhetorical question and something a smarter writer would avoid because he wouldn’t pack so much into one post but given the weight of 10/7 I find some relief here.
Spent so much of the day confronted by the tone deaf, morally challenged and the foolish so I am choosing to go for a hard stop by quoting something I wrote on Facebook earlier.
I keep coming across people who say October 7 was horrible but to remember the innocent Palestinians that have died too.
Every time I read this I wonder if these tone deaf folks say something similar on 9/11.
“Remember the poor Al Qaeda terrorists and innocent Afghanis that died because of that day too.
There is something wrong with them. The loss of innocent lives is tragic but I have no patience for your co-opting the day this way.
Jews have spent the last year being told how we ought to mourn, defend ourselves, and or act.
Many of our college students have had to navigate craziness most of us have never seen.This comes from both sides of the political spectrum so don’t come at me with your ‘my side is ok’ because it is not.
End of rant…for now. 😉
P.S. Got to go help Johnny with some more writing now, he wants to flesh out what was written in the prior post.
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