“The older I grow, the more I notice that childhood and old age not only meet but are the two most profound states we are given to live. The essence of a being is revealed in them, before or after the efforts, aspirations, ambitions of life. The eyes of the child and those of the old man gaze with the calm candor of one who has not yet entered the masked ball or already left it. And the whole interval seems a vain tumult, an empty commotion, an unnecessary chaos through which we wonder why we had to go through” Marguerite Yourcenar.
Each human face looks the same, but at the same time is totally different from one another. The Gemara Sanhedrin says: Each person was created with a distinct face, mind and voice. Nowadays the principle has not changed but maybe we have?.
With our hectic lifestyles , cybernetic soul, we have lost our ability to relate to other people with an open ear, understanding heart, and true empathy? We only have machinic algorithms. As said Boris Pasternak in Dr. Zhivago: “ It’s a sickness lately. I believe the causes are moral. The vast majority of us require constant hypocrisy, erected in a system. But you can’t, without consequences, show yourself every day different from what you feel: sacrifice for what you don’t love, rejoice in what makes us unhappy. The nervous system is not a void sound or invention. Our soul occupies a place in space and lies inside us like teeth in the mouth. You can’t rape her endlessly.”
We have only two ways to relate to one another. It can be “panim b’panim” or “achor b’achor,” “face to face,” or “back to back.” That means people can actually relate directly to each other (face to face) or they can be as far apart as two people standing back to back. When two people are standing back to back, they are further apart that they are from anybody else in the entire world. The entire circumference of the world separates them. Whereas when people are directly engaged with each other in a conversation, or the like, it is an actual connection between two people in a real way. Only in that place we may find a face that loves us beyond any transitional misunderstanding .
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