The Meaning of Life (According to Heschel)

I recently was sent this quote from a 1972 interview with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. 

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Carl Stern’s interview with Dr. Heschel. Originally broadcast on NBC-TV on Sunday, February 4, 1972, under the auspices of The Eternal Light.

Stern: We have just about a minute or so left.  I should have said at the start of this hour, before we began this hour, that Dr. Heschel indicated an interest in directing a message to young people.  And I don’t know that I ever in the past hour gave you the chance I promised that I would give you.

Heschel: I would say to young people a number of things.  And we only have one minute. I would say, let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity.  Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can, everyone, do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all the frustrations and all disappointments.  And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.  You’re not a machine. And you are young. Start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

For the Women Who Mother Me

When I was in second grade, I didn’t want to make a Mother’s Day card with the rest of the kids in class. My teacher, a kind person who I’m sure meant well, insisted. “You can write to her in heaven,” she said. I thought it was a stupid idea, and refused again.

My mom died when I was five years old. My father remained single throughout my childhood, and only very recently–to my twenty-something surprise–did he fall in love again, getting married at City Hall to his lovely wife one year ago, at sixty-five. Because he raised me and my brother by himself, I grew up without a mom or a stepmom. The absence was felt keenly and mundanely at the same time: I internally corrected teachers who told us to take permission slips home to our “mom and dad”, I answered small talk questions about my parents with the phrase “my family” (“my family moved here when I was five”), and I cringed at every TV show, movie, or book that used the backstory of a dead mom to explain a character’s troubled emotional landscape.

When I was a freshman in college, I called my father to let him know that I would be attending Yom Kippur services for the first time. He told me that there was a special prayer read by people who don’t have a mother, and asked me to find it and read it. I was moved that Judaism–my own religion, and one I knew next to nothing about–had such a prayer. Today, I read it four times a year: Yom Kippur, Passover, Sukkot, and (right around the corner now) Shavuot. Sometimes I cry. Usually, I don’t. In many ways, I’m accustomed to the idea that I don’t have a mom.

But that idea began to shift a year and a half ago.

Read the rest on the Lilith blog.

Black Skinny Jeans

“Why is it so hard to be good at my job, write, work out regularly, work on my fellowship project, be on a synagogue board, have a social life, and continue to spend time growing a serious relationship?” I asked my therapist recently. I should have also added: and be a good sister and daughter, be a good roommate, learn to cook, learn to drive.

“You can’t do it all at the same time,” she answered.

The truth is, I’m trying. But there are only so many hours in the day and I mostly just want to be happy. My therapist went on to say that as different pieces become important, my priorities and how I spend my time will shift.

Suddenly, I began to look at my on-again, off-again, years-long Unbuttoned Pants Deadlock in a new way.

I am fifteen pounds heavier than I think I should be. At least, I am fifteen pounds heavier than I was a year and a half ago, and that knowledge has driven me slightly bonkers as well as to the gym. I learned to run, and I run on the treadmill and sometimes in the park close to my apartment. My weight has gone up and down and up and down… or, lately, just up and up. In recent months, every time I stepped on the scale I thought “Wow, I’ve never seen that number on here before.”

My pants—a pair of jeans that I wear almost daily—haven’t been fitting me but I put them on every day anyway. I’ve always refused to buy larger pants because I thought that would be “defeat”. This logic served me well in the past, as I was moved to buckle down and get the weight off. This time, months have passed and more often than not I just feel like a packaged ham busting out of my clothes.

I surrender. Dear God, I look fine. I look good. I eat well, and I’m working out regularly, and damn it: I’d rather be comfortable in a pair of pants that actually fit me. As my therapist said, I can’t do everything at the same time. So if I sit down at my job, or at a board meeting, or to write, or to work on my fellowship project—I don’t want to unbutton my pants anymore.

Yesterday I bought a new pair of jeans. They’re black skinny jeans and they’re a size that I’ve never worn before in my whole life.

They look great. Best of all, I feel great in them. I’m done obsessing. I’ll buy a smaller size if and when I get there.

You are so far away, God.

Adaptation of the beginning of Psalm 22, which I wrote for a contest. Didn’t win the contest, but hey—new poem.

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You are so far away, God.
I try to call you but my words are tinny, tiny.
Why have you gone?
I cry at my desk all day,
get no sleep at night,
and still, God, you do not answer.
You do not catch me when I fall.

Yet I know that you are holy.
The children of Israel enthroned you.
In you my ancestors trusted:
they trusted you and you delivered them.
They cried to you and you rescued them.
There was no shame in this—
only trust that you would save.

But I am not them, and these are different days.
People see my tears, and wag their heads.
“She trusts in God,” they mouth.
“Let God deliver her!” they say,
“Let God rescue her, since she delights in God!”

Yet I know:
you are the one who took me from the womb.
You made me trust you.
You put me at my mother’s breast.
From my birth was I cast on you,
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

So please, be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.

In the Long Run

Starting something is fun. I’m great at starting things: jumping rope, buying a ukulele, having a curfew, writing a one-woman show, meditating.

In the beginning, there is promise and sparkle and hope. Beginnings also last different amounts of time; recently, when I learned to run, I did a nine week training program called Couch to 5k. I stuck to it for all nine weeks, but really the whole process was only the beginning of making running a regular part of my life.

…And that’s where it gets less fun. These days I don’t jump rope, my ukulele is buried under my bed, I haven’t kept my 11pm curfew in a while, I haven’t touched my one woman show, and I rarely meditate. While I have indeed learned to run, I don’t run as often as I did, nor for as long at a time. With fitness in general, I feel discouraged because I’ve worked so hard to keep good habits, but then I drop them, get unhealthy, and bounce back to square one.

It reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite philosophers, Homer Simpson:

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What’s the point of going out? We’re just going to wind up back here anyway.

Beginnings sparkle, but I think true beauty is in maintaining. I’m often discouraged because I tend to think the way that Homer Simpson does. My pants fit and then they don’t and then they do and then they don’t—and the back and forth makes me want to stop everything, throw my hands up in the air, and declare that all of my fitness efforts have been for naught. But the trick here is to maintain, to keep going (and also to stop thinking that my torso is the only indicator of health).

I don’t know how to make maintaining something seem as sexy as starting something. New ideas and projects and habits and friendships and relationships are energizing! But I think maintaining is more important in the long run, and more fulfilling.

Ultimately, I disagree with Homer Simpson: as long as we keep moving, we’ll never wind up where we started. Even if the circumstances look the same… we’ve changed.

carrying

From about a year ago.

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Suddenly, I realize I’m carrying a bomb.
It’s strapped around my chest, under my winter jacket.
Senses are heightened: I hear

The rustle of a woman’s plastic bag, feel
The rumble beneath of the wheels on the tracks,
And can smell myself—I smell like fear, and hair.
Pulse pounds. Cheeks flush. How long
Have I been armed? Moments, weeks, months?
Neck tight. I’m still in love with you. Shoulders hunched.
I hug myself, this weapon—the beginning of destruction—
Wonder how it happened. And woven through the wires,
Humming, lie spring summer autumn.

How My Friend’s Mom Schooled Me on Celebrity Doppelgangers

If you have a Facebook account, you probably have encountered this recurring trend before: people post as their profile picture an image of a celebrity they look like (or think they look like, or have been told they look like…). The celebrities are considered their “doppelgangers”, and it can be entertaining to see who chooses whom, and how close the resemblance really is.

I hadn’t previously participated because no obvious celebrity doppelganger ever came to mind. Still, I’m a bit of a sucker for Facebook sometimes, so I recently spent more time than I care to admit trying to solve the “problem” of figuring one out.

In high school, someone once told me that I looked like Anne Hathaway’s character in The Princess Diaries. (“Before or after the makeover?” I retorted.) Bingo! I not-so-quickly found a picture of Anne Hathaway in that role and posted it. People began to comment—I considered it a victory that my bestie Becca wrote “It’s a fake Julie!”—and then this comment came in from the mom of one of my closest friends:

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Julie, you are better looking and more real than that picture, and I like Anne Hathaway.

I’m friends with my friend’s mom, too, and respect her opinion a great deal. Her comment brought the whole celebrity doppelganger business down around me. Why was I posting a picture of another person as my profile picture? It seemed especially inane because the entertainment value of sharing a resemblance with someone famous was a stretch in my case: I don’t look like Anne Hathaway. Maybe a teeny little bit, in this photo and a few others of her from that role… but not really. After I read that comment, it suddenly felt like I had gleefully allowed a fictional version of a complete stranger to hijack my identity.

I don’t have issues with how I look or who I am. I like how I look. I like who I am. I quickly changed my profile picture back, and was myself again.

The next day, I posted a few photos from my recent travels abroad. Without missing a beat, my friend’s mom commented on the album:

Much more interesting than Anne Hathaway!