Tag Archives: Friends

On My Mind

On Living

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Yesterday I thought I saw a former student walking towards me on 14th Street. I felt a grin spread across my face and nearly called out to say hello. And then I remembered.

That student passed away earlier this year. She was shot.

The stranger came closer and I realized they hardly resembled each other. I turned my head away. No one looks too long in New York.

Early last week my mum called to tell me that a dear friend of my sister’s had died. Drug overdose.

I was on the train home when she called and I had nothing to say. After staring out the window in silence for a few stops without seeing any of the stations, I called a friend and asked for help. He told me, There’s nothing to say.

On Friday, I had a conversation with a student, a rabbi’s son, about what happens when God isn’t there or isn’t listening. This child is suffering and doesn’t know why God can’t hear him. He suggested that maybe God has grown too old, too frail, and is now incapable of doing all that God used to do to intervene in the lives of everyday people and propel the world towards a higher plan. My student mentioned that he thought people who believe in God are less likely to commit suicide than people who don’t. Why? I asked. Because even if you can’t live for yourself, you can live for God, he explained. Statistically, I think he’s right, but I said a few words about mental health and the importance of medication for fixing a sick brain, just like medication fixes a sick body. You mean depression? he asked. I nodded. Yeah, he said, I know about that.

My student asked what I thought about a God who doesn’t listen, and I told him I no longer believe in anything I can’t prove. What about air? he asked. You can’t prove that you breathe air. I cupped my hand in front of my mouth, took an audible breath, and blew into it. Yes, I said, I can.

I asked my student how it felt to think that God really isn’t listening, really isn’t anywhere, and really can’t do anything at all. He wasn’t ready to go there. That’s okay. In times of suffering, it’s helpful to think that someone or something is watching and cares.

This I know because I’ve been there.

What makes you good at what you do? my therapist asked once.

I don’t like the self-promotion part of having a career.

I think that kids just want to be treated like people. I think a lot of adults lose sight of that and I try really hard not to.

Last summer, I read an article on one of my favorite blogs about The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. Shortly thereafter, I read the novel and recommended it to everyone who asked for a good book. I’ve yet to see a more moving portrayal about what it means to live and to love.

The article contains a quote that has been saved on my GoogleKeep ever since. de Botton says,

My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways – and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.

That’s what I’ve been reminded of this week. That we’re all fragile, that life is fragile. That we’re all holding ourselves together to get from one day to the next and that allowing others to simply be, to breathe freely and deeply, is perhaps the greatest act of compassion we can perform for one another. An act in which we merely stand by the sides of those we love, holding their hands when they need it and letting them go when they don’t.

We are all these incredibly fragile beings. This acknowledgment should give us permission to err, to be forgiven, and to grow, both together and apart, as friends, partners, lovers, and just as people.

We are all doing the best that we can. Knowing this means going easy with one another, as de Botton suggests. Understanding and accepting others for who and what they are then comes from a place of genuine care and concern for well-being. It means meeting individuals where they are, not where we think they should be.

You act like there’s no one left
Alive in the whole city
Well maybe the end is upon you
And what then?
Here, repeat after me
It goes, I won’t stop loving
I won’t stop loving
You don’t have to be perfect
You don’t have to play well
You don’t have to fix everything
All by yourself
Now don’t laugh ’cause I just might be
The soft curve in your hardline

-“Hardliners,” Holcombe Waller

Whoever you are, whatever you need, I will go easy on you. You’re safe here.

On My Mind

(Dis)connection

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I’ve been at a loss for words lately. I’ve been doing a lot of writing but abandoning drafts half formed, a lot of thinking but letting the thoughts go before uncovering them, playing with them, sharing them. I finished three (or was it four?) books this week, hoping their words would color the ideas I can’t seem to articulate.

A total sense of detachment from my own thoughts is strange. It’s like I’m watching myself try to figure out what I want to say and how I want to say it, staring out the windows of this café, half-noticing the people walking across the street. My own thoughts float lazily back to me, reminders that they’re there if I want to find them, introduce them to each other, engage with whatever is tugging at the back of my mind.

I’m an observer to my own mind. I’m lucid dreaming while awake.

On the surface, I’m preoccupied with a field trip, modified school schedules, papers to grade, end-of-year projects to implement. I can’t stop reading about healthcare and I can’t shake a deep sense of insecurity that I can’t quite place.

Oddly, however, discounting the healthcare travesty for the moment, it’s been a truly wonderful week. School was busy and productive and I laughed a lot. There was also a lot of socializing, which, while typical of my life in general, has not been typical of my life in New York. As usual when things happen, everything is happening all at once.

And that leaves me nostalgic.

I’m moving again over the summer (details on that after three more pieces of paper are finalized and signed) and that means starting over. When I know I’m about to say goodbye, I grow reluctant to do it. I grow more forgiving of the irritations and inconveniences I encounter, and begin to see them as endearing idiosyncrasies rather than sources of frustrations. I become aware of opportunities I haven’t taken, people I haven’t truly gotten to know, foods I haven’t tried, neighborhoods I haven’t explored, music I haven’t heard, sights I haven’t seen. As I make preparations to move for the fourth time in as many years, I begin to drag my feet, making mental (and sometimes physical) notes of what I’ll miss.

It’s never easy to leave.

And sometimes, it’s equally difficult to go.

I’ve learned that there’s a difference between leaving and going. The former means packing a life into boxes, hugging the people who have gone from being strangers to being friends, leaving the keys on the table, and waving goodbye. It’s a deliberate decision to stop turning back. It’s an exhale, a sigh, a conclusion. The latter is the first step forward, checking the time and setting the GPS, or handing over a passport to gate agents. It’s about deciding to take a chance, a gamble, a deep inhale. In going somewhere new, you’re supposed to be ready for anything. Otherwise, why go?

I didn’t do any of that when I moved to New York. I turned around in Singapore’s Changi Airport one more time after clearing passport control, and that was when I knew I was heading down a road leading to a very different future than the one I hadn’t admitted I was hoping for.

My mind has been spinning at night, which is apparent when I wake up before my alarm, when I look at my watch at the end of a run, when my dreams are fragments of conversations not had. I’m floating in between a life I might have had and a life I hope to have. Maybe you just weren’t ready, a friend suggested yesterday. I think she’s right.

What if I’m never ready? What if, now that I know what I’m looking for (including, not limited to, and largely involving authentic connection and collaboration with those around me) and what I want to do (change the world), none of it ever comes to fruition?

That’s the big step forward I mentioned earlier. It’s admitting what I’m looking for and want to do and committing to that. It’s dedicating my actions, relationships, and career to those things rather than trying to figure out what those things are. And it’s daunting because failure, readjustment, modification, and heartbreak are all likely along the road ahead.

But so are success, achievement, happiness, and love.

Because that’s what living means. As it has been. As it will be.

There’s no stopping in place because places don’t stop. There’s no turning back time because time can’t turn. There are no crystal balls, nothing foretold, foreknown, or predetermined. There are roads, as Dante and Frost said, and some roads are less traveled.

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Travel Guide

Travel Guide: Tel Aviv

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A lot gets packed into our eighth grade trip to Israel. After four nights in Jerusalem, two nights in the Negev, and three nights on the Kinneret, the trip staff were exhausted. Built into the trip was a weekend with host families, usually students’ relatives or family friends. For staff, this meant two nights to choose anywhere in Israel to stay and just relax. One of my carpool friends was also a trip chaperone and we chose to spend the weekend in Tel Aviv; it was nothing less than glorious.

With the kids, we stopped in Tel Aviv twice over the course of the trip: Once to eat falafel and hang out in a park before visiting the Olympic Museum, which was entertaining for the kids and a lovely display of Zionism, and once to go to the beach. Suffice it to say that Tel Aviv (and perhaps anything) with kids is completely different than with adults.

After traveling by bus with a group of students also staying in and around Tel Aviv, we were free! We dropped our bags at the hotel and headed straight to Nachlat Binyamin, the artists’ market where, back in 2007, my parents bought a fruit plate that still sits on their kitchen counter and I bought a pair of purple earrings that I wore every single day until they turned green. (Those earrings are the reason that I chose purple studs when I pierced the second hole in my right ear.) I didn’t buy anything this time, but it was still fun to look around.

From there, hungry, in the mood for shakshuka, and still in need of gifts, we wandered Shuk HaCarmel, the most famous of Tel Aviv’s markets. As readers of this blog know, I adore markets. I love food and smells and flavors. I love the dedication of the vendors, the passionate bargaining of customers, and the speed of each transaction. I love the crowds and how markets are universally loud, frenetic, and a true delight for all the senses.

This particular market area of Tel Aviv is also a great spot for really neat street art. Shout out to my weekend partner-in-crime for her patience every time I said, “Wait, need a picture.”

Truth be told, however, we spent most of our weekend just sitting on the beach. I’m generally really bad at sitting but that’s all my body wanted to do. Sometimes we sat with food or drinks and sometimes we just sat and watched the water. We met up with a friend and some friends of friends and had ourselves a lovely time.

In addition to a great beach atmosphere, Tel Aviv also has a great restaurant and bar scene. On recommendation from one of our trip guides who lives in Tel Aviv, we went to Four One Six, a vegan restaurant that exceeded all expectations. After a few minutes of talking to the owner, we made a New York connection – he and his twin brother, the head chef, are from Brooklyn and opened the restaurant together a few months ago. He had previously worked at Candle 79, a phenomenal vegan restaurant that was blocks away from my Upper East Side apartment for the month that I lived there. The owner was really friendly and told us that he and his brother are working to challenge the food scene in Tel Aviv by introducing delicious vegan food that highlights what vegan can eat rather than what they can’t. Sounds a little like Candle 79! (And Vedge in Philadelphia, which I also highly recommend.) The owner dropped off a plate of chocolates and stopped back to ask if we’d figured out the flavors. Delicious isn’t a flavor but that’s what they were.

Other food highlights from the weekend include shakshuka, which we didn’t find at Shuk HaCarmel but ate outside at a sidewalk bakery/café, and burekas, which we also enjoyed while sitting outside. I could eat nothing but Israeli food every day for the rest of my life and never get bored. Every meal, including breakfast, is full of various types of fresh salads and I just love it.

After dinner, we met up with our guide, his girlfriend, and a few other friends at Dizzy Frishdon, a great bar with outdoor seating, several indoor bar areas, a table with swings instead of chairs, and a few rooms of normal tables and chairs. It was a really lovely evening to sit outside (are you noticing a theme?) and enjoy just being in Tel Aviv and watching the nightlife all around us. Our guide’s friend is a part owner of the bar and that came with food and drinks perks, which was a lot of fun.

Overall, it was an incredibly relaxing weekend and exactly what we needed to prepare for the final two nights of the trip back in Jerusalem. It actually ended up being two and a half nights after a seven-hour flight delay, so it’s a good thing that we were relaxed and rejuvenated. Beautiful beaches, beautiful food, and beautiful people have a way of doing that.

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View from our hotel room