Going somewhere

I was speaking to a friend the other night and it got me thinking. We were discussing a friend of ours. Over the course of my time in Israel I talked many times the friend in question and found him to be a most gentile spirit, filled with a burning desire to find truth.

This friend had decided to go back to Israel for the third or fourth time in the last two years. This really confused me because the last time we had spoke (admittedly it was months ago) he seemed committed to coming back to America, finishing college and looking for a job… looking for a place in this world that he could call his own. Now he’s going back to Israel without a return ticket, back to Aish, back to being back.

I can’t help feeling a bit defeated by this, after all I took it as a personal mission in my time at Aish to encourage many lost souls to go back to college and finish what they started. To encourage them to look for a meaningful existence in moderation and to be open to the idea that fulfillment could come in all sorts of different packages.

So it was disheartening to learn that this friend didn’t really give it a fair shot… maybe that’s wrong of me to say, I haven’t been involved in his life much in the last six months but I do know a few things about life and one thing that I know is you MUST give things time, that you MUST not quit when things don’t go your way initially, you MUST be unreasonable at times and not give up on something just because it’s hard.

Coming back to America is like that…when you’ve spent the last two years going back and forth between Eretz Israel, Mitzriem and America, where is your home? Before to long your not sure if your coming or going, which way is up or down.

So I think I do understand the motivation to go back right now, truth be told I feel it a little myself at the moment, jobless, struggling to get my life back to where I want it to be, spiritually unfulfilled… It’s attractive to think about going back to yeshiva life… Days spent learning, going to lectures, celebrating weddings, bris, mourning deaths. Together in yeshiva… in Israel away from ones family and old friends… life is felt in its most tender moments viscerally… Some of the most real moments I have ever experienced were felt there.

But maybe I haven’t tried hard enough here and now; maybe those moments are waiting for me down the road. Maybe I still have other work to do before I’m allowed to really feel life like that again in all its faintest pastels and all its boldest, richest colors.

I hope and pray that my friend finds truth and clarity in his journeys but I fear he and many, many others like him will not. I fear they will never give themselves a chance to own up to the realities of life, a life outside the very small, very comfortable world that they’ve been shown.

Everybody’s trying so hard to go somewhere…they never end up anywhere at all…