Excitement and dread, ecstasy and agony, the extreme poles of human emotion, I feel them all, more acutely then ever at the moment. I’m getting ready to go to camp for the summer and I couldn’t be more conflicted. I’m content with my life at the moment, any minor complaints are simply that minor and ultimately trivial, yet the human condition being what it is, I feel overwhelmed, because the thing is, I’ve never been to camp before…yes you read that right, I’ve never been to camp before.
I never had any desire as a child to go and now at the age of twenty five, I’m getting ready for a summer filled with camp and I’m just not sure what to do about it. I mean I just got here, I’m just a month and a half into living in Boston, I’m just starting to feel comfortable where I am and now I’m about to be somewhere else.
What I know is this, after the summer is over I’ll have a few quiet months at work, I’ll have time then to pursue my larger goals and for now I need to accept that this summer is part of those larger goals, it can just be difficult to see at times. I knew when I accepted this job that this was part of the deal: devote the summer to your job in exchange for getting September almost completely off for the Jewish holidays, getting leave early every Shabbat. In exchange for living, eating, breathing, sleeping amongst Jews all the time.
I told my father, thus far, since college / Birthright every decision I’ve made has focused around only one thing. When I moved to New York after college it was because I wanted to live in a Jewish community for the first time in my life. When I picked up everything and went to Israel is was because I wanted to do some serious learning and connect with Eretz Israel in a deeper way. When I took the job with camp it was because I’d be in a place where no one would question my Jewishness, which truth be told, was and is still a big issue for me. A good friend remarked one time ‘gosh you’re just Jewish, you’re not coming out of the closet or anything, your just freaking Jewish…chill out.’ It may be funny but it has a ring of truth to it. Less so now then when it was said three years ago, but true none the less.
In short I’ve been somewhat simple minded for the last few years, it’s all been about only one thing: where can I find a place that I’m comfortable being me. I hope and pray camp will add a new dimension to that. That idea certainly was a big reason I decided to move to this new place. I know if nothing else I will walk away with many, many good stories that I hope to share on this blog. For now I’ll keep learning as much as I can, doing what I can to reach my goals, it’s the only thing I can do.
La Chaim!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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2 comments:
Good luck with camp! And nice job citing the famous book about Michelangelo in the title.
There's a wonderful quote asking the question you have been asking, namely, when one is most themselves. It's from one of my favorite books- A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L'Engle.
~
"When are you most completely you, Vicky?"
It wasn't at all what I had expected him to say. I was looking for answers, not more questions.
"When?" he repeated.
Maybe because I was feeling extraordinarily tired I was thinking in scenes, rather than logical sequences, and across my mind's eye flashed a picture of the loft, with the old camp cots, and the windows overlooking the ocean, and the lighthouse at night with its friendly beam, and on the far wall the lines of the poem Grandfather had painted there, If thou could'st empty all thyself of self...
I was not really myself when I was all replete with very me. So when was I?
"When you first took me to meet Basil [a dolphin]," I said slowly, "and when I was petting him and scratching his chest..."
"Who were you thinking about?"
"Basil."
"Were you thinking about you?"
"No."
"But were you really being you?"
"Yes."
"So that's the contradiction, isn't it? You weren't thinking about yourself at all. You were completely thrown out of yourself in concentration on Basil. And yet you were really being you."
I leaned my head against Adam's shoulder. "Much more than when I'm all replete with very me."
His right hand drew my head more comfortably against his shoulder. "So, when we're thinking consciously about ourselves, we're less ourselves than when we're not being self-centered."
"I suppose..."
"Okay, here's another analogy. Where are you when you write poetry?"
"This summer I'm usually up in the loft."
"You know that's not what I mean. When you're actually writing a poem, when you're in the middle of it, where are you?"
"I'm not sure. I'm more in the poem than I am in me. I'm using my mind, really using it, and yet I'm not directing the poem or telling it where to go. It's telling me."
His strong fingers moved gently across my hair. "That's the way it is with science, too. All the great scientists, like Newton, like Einstein, repeat the same thing- that the discoveries don't come when you're consciously looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go of conscious control. They come in a sudden flash, and you can receive that flash, or you can refuse to. But if you're willing to receive it, then for that instantaneous moment that you're really you, but you're not conscious in the same way you have to be later on when you look at what you saw in the flash, and then have to work out the equations to prove it."
I heard every word he said. And I think I understood. At the same time my entire body was conscious of the feel of his fingers stroking my hair. I wondered if he felt it as strongly as I did. But I asked, "Has that happened to you, that knowing in a flash?"
"Not in the way it did to Einstein with his theory of relativity. Or to Dr. O'Keefe, with his work on limb regeneration. But in little ways with Basil, yes. He's taught me more about himself than I could have learned with just my thinking self. And Basil- Basil has taught you, hasn't he?"
"Yes. Oh, yes."
He lifted his hand and stopped stroking. "And you saw Jeb with Ynid."
Yes, I had seen Dr. Nutteley with Ynid. In the midst of his pain, Jeb had been wholly real.
"What I think"- Adam's hand began caressing my hair again- "is that if we're still around after we die, it will be more like those moments when we let go, than the way we are most of the time. It'll be- it'll be the self beyond the self we know."
At that moment there was a rip in the clouds and an island of star-sparkled sky appeared, its light so brilliant it seemed to reach down beyond the horizon and encircle the earth, a ring of pure and endless light.
~
This is from A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L'Engle, pages 162-164.
When are you most completely you?
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