There’s a story I’ve shared quite a few times over the past six years since I became an accidental activist for holistic health and conscious living. The story goes like this: I used to roll my eyes at environmentalists. I … Continue reading
I am struck by the pictures my friend Holly is sending back to us from Hong Kong and Vietnam.
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She’s feeding her wanderlust with banana pancakes, dim sum, and gorgeous panoramas, while feeding our desire for travel photography “porn.”
I love instagram.
Almost in the same moment that the drool drips down my chin, while mesmerized by the lush green mountain ranges and Buddha statues, I long for the eyes through which I saw Israel in the first months I lived here.
The virgin immigrant eyes.
The virgin immigrant heart that burst with joy each and every day…at the beauty of this land; in curious awe of her people.
Cochav Hayarden, March 2012
When we first made Aliyah, every drive was emotionally equivalent to a stroll through an art museum; every hike through a national park was a new adventure in a foreign land.
Every day I would find myself saying out loud: “Do I really live here?”
And I meant it in the same way a mother whispers over her newborn baby, “Are you really mine?”
Two years after making Aliyah, I find that my eyes and my heart are still capable of wonder.
But it’s an experience that does not come as naturally and as automatic as before.
I need, instead, to make those moments happen.
And that takes a lot of work on my part.
I need to see the trash fire in Kfar Manda
— and turn my anger into compassion, and then activism.
And that’s really hard.
It’s much easier to be angry. To rant. To shake my head.
I need to remember, in a moment I feel frustrated by my community, when I am outraged by their seeming indifference to the trash that peppers our fields
how grateful I am for my community.
How my community supports me.
How my community allows me the freedom to be a Jew in Progress. To be curious. To be a novice at living in this country.
Acknowledging my community as a gift, however, is really hard work when I am stuck in a moment of discontent.
It’s much easier for me to assume. To judge. To wish myself away from here.
It’s really hard work — and a huge emotional commitment — to be present in your life all the time.
To notice. To stop. To redirect. To be who you want to be, not your raw-emotion-of-the-moment.
It’s exhausting — living your best life.
It’s much easier to feel alive when you are on vacation — separate from the drudgery that often clouds your intentions.
It’s much easier to feel alive when you are first in love; experiencing a newness; your senses overwhelmed by glorious colors and smells.
I recognize this.
And I acknowledge that some days I am too tired to live my best life.
But on the alternate days — the ones in which I work hard for happiness, the ones in which I allow my heart to be open and my mind to be free — I find beauty that surpasses any landscape, any painting, any colorful market scene.
A vacation awaits me.
In my regular boring life.
And yours.
