ElderChicks

With more time on my hands these past two years than I have ever before experienced, save for the two years that I set aside 25 years ago when I quit teaching at La Salle and Villanova and tried to follow what the Bhagavad Gita teaches, that I come to differentiate between “the action in inaction and the inaction in action”, I find myself more and more disgusted and angered at the things of the world. Camus said “There are more things to admire in human beings than to than despise.”  And I want to continue to believe that.  But too often I don’t like myself because I am so filled with anger towards people whose ideas and actions I detest.  The enlightened person is said to be one who “neither hates nor loves” so I guess I’m not enlightened. I long ago forsook non-attachment to the world as suggested by Buddha and other wise yogis and embraced Gotthold Lessing’s belief: “There are some things that must cause us to lose our reason or we have no reason to lose.” But too much energy is expended when I get so involved in the world that I lose the existential trust that maybe Shakespeare is right–perhaps there really are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in my philosophy. Maybe the Big G does have the whole world in her hands.When I moved back to the East coast two years ago from San Diego I realized that I really wasn’t in “Kansas” anymore. The proverbial “they” kept telling me how lucky I am to be closer to my family (I am, but I think I saw them for longer periods when we were separated by 3,000 miles!). How great for you to be only 90 miles from New York! (I’ve been there only once since I’ve been back!). You’ll love the seasonal changes! But wearing a heavy coat, ear muffs, scarf, mittens, and boots was decidedly not what I was used to. And the summers?  Humidity–100 degrees!

How silly that seems now.

The storm barely touched me–just mild annoyance of bringing in from my balcony and that of my cousins’ balcony the outdoor furniture, plants, etc.  But the hurricane did wreak havoc on so many,  many others. Unlike human beings, Nature doesn’t play favorites–the storm’s effect has been devastating. Bad things really do happen to a lot of good people.

But Thelma said it so well–times of crises are opportunities to reflect on what is really of value.

We had earthquakes where I lived and Santa Ana winds that started fires. I was lucky then too. During the October fires of three years ago I had, with my cat in tow, evacuated to La Jolla to stay with my good friends. I called home everyday and was relieved when the answering machine came on. Two days later I was back in Rancho Bernardo where many homes, including that of my good friend, had burned to the ground.

There are rare moments in my life–“touchstones of reality” that engender in me the desire to be a “nicer” person, to neither covet nor gossip, to be more creative, to volunteer to help where I’m needed, to remind me that I must not give up my freedom to choose how I behave when the vicissitudes of life bear down on me.  “Everything can be taken from us,” Victor Frankl said, except the “freedom of choice as to how we respond to our fate. ” I too often forget that I have that freedom.

And so like Jacob, wrestling with the nameless stranger, I must let the Hurricane Sandies remind me to call myself Israel. I taught my students over the years, be they Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jew, or other, that they too must become “Israel”–not “an” Israeli, I said, but  ‘sra El–one who wrestles with the Power that Be’s–to contend. To keep asking questions. We may not get the answers as often as we’d like, but sometimes, when the awe of the ineffable overwhelms us, we may come to know, not only how little we know, but what it is–in us and in the world–we can rely on.