Breathe....(3am)

Sorry for the horrible music references, yet again :) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rtJRlLdI8]

There is something poignant about the human subconscious' ability to worm its way into your consciousness at the most inopportune times and set your reptilian brain alight in fear and fright.

There is also something, on an elemental level, about aliyah that forces you to abandon caution (on some level - I am truly NOT advocating coming to Israel on a song and a prayer; coming with savings and a plan is a far better idea, and allows for many more songs and prayers with a roof over your head afterwards) and trust the destiny you claim as ancestral birthright, bought with a bowl of lentils and sealed with a mustard and cold cuts sandwich.

Those two things are a heady brew, one that can leave you sleepless in Jerusalem.

For how does one know that which he believes? In less pedantic and obscure terms, how does one reassure his doubts in his destiny, his self, his abilities to make something work and flourish when that very thing can be against normal odds, if not common sense?

Who in their right mind moves to another country when they dont speak the local language, nor have a job? Where the society runs on who you know, and you dont know anyone? Where your children will one day be strangers in your own land to you, speaking a different language, with incomparably different worries and dreams than you had at their age, to the point you may not understand them at all? Who leaves family, friends, and support networks behind for a dream?

And who knows if we'll make it.


I think many failed olim fail because they keep one foot in either world, looking at the lights at both ends of the tunnel...the words in the song are prophetic in that regard - trying to leave the way you came in will only have you make all your mistakes again, in reverse order, as you return to where you were.
This is a fantastic teshuva metaphor as well, by the way.
So here is to diving headfirst, to "absorption" (I think the Hebrew term is so hilariously accurate, in that Israeli blunt way), to making it to the other end of the tunnel. And to breathing...and maybe, even, perhaps, sleeping.