Bittersweet - Looking at life through the Chanukah lights

There are about three months between Yom Kippur, the last day of the Jewish High Holy Days, and Chanukah. we are celebrating Chanukah as I write this  Yom Kippur is an intensely introspective day, in which we pledge to do our best in the coming year, and pray for a good year. It is followed in quick succession by two holidays in which we turn our attention outward.  The first is Sukkot, a harvest festival, in which we thank God for the physical bounty of the earth.  The second is Simchat Torah, in which we thank God for the Torah, which is our spiritual bounty. After that, the New Year is truly underway, and with it, our struggle to maintain the spiritual strength we have felt during the holidays begins.  Then comes Chanukah, a celebration of a military victory over oppression, a celebration of joy and light.

During this past high holy days season, I had thought a lot about how I could behave in a way that would make me a better person.  I congratulated myself on writing an interesting, and some have told me, inspiring blog post on this subject. But, in a way, my musings were selfish.  I had looked for a way to use the teachings of the Torah to not only make me a better person, but also to provide a quick fix to make me a happier person.  But neither being a good person, or a happy person, is all that easy.

I realized after a while, that I was trying to  fix my life with a kind of "mind over matter" magic.  I thought I could simply think happy, and I would be happy.  I would find life's blessings, make them the focus of my attention, and feel the blessings so intensely that I would simply forget all of life's difficulties.

This effort became so difficult, that for a while I contemplated avoiding any contact with people or places that reminded me of anything unpleasant.  I thought that perhaps I could retreat into my own world, where my life would be the standard for normal life, for the best life.  I tried to make myself believe that people with excess energy, who worked every day, who walked fast, and thought fast, and thought they were happy, were really missing out on the peace and patience of a slower life.  I worked at this with such intensity that, for a while, I believed that I did feel happier than I had in a long time.  I thought I was pushing all of my unhappiness away, and that it was leaving me entirely.

In reality,  my unhappiness had only gone as far as the back of my mind.  I began to be disturbed by a new demon -- nightmares.  When night fell, the unhappiness would find its way out of the back of my mind and into my thoughts.  It taunted me in my sleep.  I began having nightmares, one after another, every night.  I started to dread bed time.  I started to awaken startled and afraid, staying up during the hours after midnight, watching television,  afraid to go back to sleep.  I grew tired and resentful, but I tried not to show it, and above all, not to feel it.

One Saturday morning,  a few weeks ago, I felt that the little happy world I was trying to make for myself was cracking around me.  It started when my husband, my energetic husband, was home, rather than at work as he was during the week.  Nor had he gone off to the Temple, as he usually did on Saturday mornings.   Instead, he was bustling about the house.  The sound of it, of his energy, his footsteps, the light and dark of the room as his shadow bounded in and out, intruded on my tired and strained little world.  I started to want what he had: the energy, and, even more, the  choices.  I wanted the choice of whether to work or retire, where to drive off to on a weekend day, whether to go out in the evening, whether or not to go on a hike or a bike ride or stay out all day.  The choices I used to have.  Then suddenly, I screamed out loud the very thought I had been working so hard to keep from myself.  "I hate having Parkinson's Disease!" I screamed. And I meant it.

I felt a little ashamed.  I had not stayed with the program.  I had failed in my appreciation of life.  I knew I should be grateful, and in most ways, I still was.  Plenty of people were a lot worse off than me, struggling through life in one way or another.  Of course, many were sicker. Even many healthy people, however,  had problems much more serious than mine: loss, loneliness, poverty, war, persecution, repression.  What right did I have to complain? And yet, and yet...even though I knew, and in fact I truly felt, that my life was wonderful in so many ways, even though, ... I could not conquer my distress.

Although I felt ashamed, I slept peacefully that night, and every night after that. As the days went on,  I felt less tired, more energetic, and even, to my surprise, happier.  I needed to think about this.  How had I inadvertently stumbled on a secret that had made me happier by feeling sorry for myself.  How had allowing myself to give in to my lowest feelings actually improved my mood?  I had to contemplate this for a while, before the answer, as so often happens, became so obvious that I felt foolish for missing it.

I knew, finally, that what had been missing from my formula for successful living, was acceptance.  I had not accepted my actual life.  Life, the real life that we live, intrudes upon our dreams, both figuratively and literally.  Life, the real life that is around us, is not completely within our control.  We can be lucky in a lot of ways, we can be grateful about a lot of things, but we may feel deeply sad sometimes.  I had forgotten what my wise father had told me many years ago when I was a teenager: that is is a natural part of life to feel sad from time to time.  Even the luckiest among us cannot escape that ultimate truth.

I had to look at my life more realistically.  People are, after all, made up of a body and a mind.  As human beings, it is our nature to cherish and to try to protect those elements of ourselves.  The slow, but perpetual, loss of the ability to control one's body, and to use one's mind, with no hope of recovery, is bound to make a person feel sad, on some fundamental human level.  On some fundamental human level that can't be wished away, or thought away, no matter how great the intellectual effort.

The lights of Chanukah remind us of the importance of the freedom to practice our own religion, to be able to live as our true selves in peace.  This year, the lights also reminded the that spiritually, we are most free and most at peace when we are true to ourselves.  Now, during these darkest days of winter, as I enjoy the sweet small glow of the Chanukah lights, I feel the glow of peace and acceptance. Now, as I continue my efforts for good acts and appreciation of life's blessings, I am a little humbled.   I am savoring, however, maybe for the first time in a long time, the bittersweet, but truly rich, flavor of life.