Few things I have learned lately in these impossible times, you made my yesterday and today possible, thank you for the hugs, the words and the books, there’s nothing like that in times of distress. I remember that: -It is dark because you are trying too hard. -Most of the dealing time belongs to conversation. Swim with someone willing to go deep in your waters. -Success is a decision. -Every time you choose to not act on your anger, you’re rewriting your brain to become calmer and more compassionate. -Your biggest enemy is your uncontrolled mind.
« Je ne parvenais plus à me passer de la présence d’un homard en plastique que je promenais partout avec moi, et dont je ne me séparais qu’au moment d’entrer en scène »
Il existe, dans la vraie vie, un fil sans bout ni d’un côté ni de l’autre, qui rend la vie pratique si épuisante qu’à chercher à la comprendre, se découvrent en elle les traits d’un witz incongru. Le récit de soi classe par séquences des événements, les assemble autour d’un temps non-fixe dont l’axe change tout le temps, selon la succession de points d’assemblage impossibles à tordre, impossibles à maintenir, des points souples d’ancrage fixés n’importe où. Rapprocher les événements, bout à bout, sans tenir compte des temps morts uniformes et sans histoire, qui avec le sommeil forment l’essentiel du temps, donnent à la vie son caractère illusoire et pathétique, réplique de répliques. Reste à rejoindre le sommeil comme refuge protecteur d’une quête sans héros pour quelques miettes précieuses. Malgré la complexité de la métamorphose et de la reproduction, la durée de vie totale du morphe bleu n’est que d’environ 3 mois.
Yom Kippur is the day when we get real. Yom Kippur is not a day to pretend to be holier than we really are. We are merely being honest with ourselves and how holy we really are. We dress in white, refrain from our bodily needs and stay all day in shul not as an act but as an expression of truth. Yom Kippur is the reality check that reminds us if we have forgotten our true selves the rest of the year.
I became aware that I need to learn how to enjoy the process of waiting. I am an impatient person by nature and feel restless until I obtain my goals.
While people commonly say that we need to take time to “smell the roses”, smell kippur apples , how many of us really do this on a consistent basis? How many of us can truly enjoy the journey before we have reached the destination?
Un mot de Simone Weil m’accompagne : « D’une manière générale ne souhaiter la disparition d’aucune de ses misères, mais la Grâce qui les transfigure. »
Earth has no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive. I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature. It is there on every side. It can be simply a shadow on a mountainside, or a sunlight on the leaves of a tree. I have always especially loved the water.
I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one’s own life and environment beautiful, so far as one’s power reaches. This includes moral beauty, one of the qualities of humanity, though it seems not to appear elsewhere in the universe. But I would have each person realize that his contribution is not important, its success not really a matter for exultation nor its failure for mourning; the beauty of things is sufficient without him.
And every year has its Rosh Hashana, that peculiarly Jewish day in which there are no parties and abandonment of restraint; in which there is no hilarious laughter and noise that is a frantic and frenetic attempt to convince all (and oneself) that he is happy; there is no frantic clutching at pleasure before it escapes and – worse – before I pass on; too soon, too soon. There is Rosh Hashana, the time post. Another year gone by – already? So soon! – and it is a time to see what the gray hairs and the added wrinkles and the slower reflexes have taught us. Rosh Hashana is one step closer to the gateway out of this world and into the next one. It is a time to rehearse the speech that we will make – all of us – some day, before the Supremest of courts, as we attempt to explain the meaning of our lives below.
Life is too short for fools. It is too long for those who know it was not given for happiness (if that comes, how wonderful, but how often does it appear, only in insignificant measures and at rare times, as drops of rain that fall on a parched desert leaving no impact, changing nothing so that the traveler never knows it fell). Life was given for holiness and sanctity, so that we might rise ourselves; so that we might consecrate and hallow that animalism within us that threatens at every moment to escape and express itself in selfishness, ego and greed – sins that are themselves only the corridors to the crimes of cruelty and hurting others. Life is not a happy thing – it is a beautiful thing, and when one becomes the artist and artisan of that beauty that is called holiness, when one practices the supreme holiness that comes of loving and giving of oneself.
Be good. Love. Love selflessly; cease speaking evil, cease thinking evil; cease searching out evil in your fellow human beings. Cease seeking to grow at the expense of others. For one who climbs on top of the man he has just chopped down is not taller. He is the same dwarf standing on his victim’s height. Be wary lest you hurt the one you love. Think before you act towards the other person. Be good as a person, as an individual, and your part of the world has become holy. Then, if others emulate you, the world will suddenly and automatically turn beautiful and hallowed. It is Elul. Think of your beloved – all the people of the earth – and think of your particular beloved. Give of yourself and you will receive that which no amount of grasping and scheming can ever bring you: self-respect. Love the other and you will learn to like yourself. Be holy, for the One who made you is Holy and for this He placed you on this earth.
It is another Rosh Hashana yet another one. How many more are left?
Selbstwehr 
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