Fragile

This week is one of those weeks.

Having a local business means that I know a lot of people, probably more than the average person in a neighbourhood. Because of that, I am exposed to more of their stories.

One of the most important things to me in my business is the contact I have with my customers. I can certainly feel mentally drained after a regular day of work, not because someone was difficult. Over the years I have learned how to deal with most situations. But because I had many conversations, and many of the people I speak with are struggling.

I am struggling as well.

Not everything is negative, of course. In fact, most of the stories are not negative. They are simply what we call life, struggles, some much more challenging than others.

In the last years (and especially in the last months) I have trained myself to stay away from many things that trigger me. It is not that I am looking for a world that accommodates my sensitivities. It is my responsibility to learn how to live with them. But because there are so many things that can upset me, I am learning to separate them: those I can avoid, and those I must deal with.

I try to take care of myself. I make sure I work out, get outside when I can, and design an environment that feels calm, at least at home, even though just a few steps downstairs there is almost constant pressure from work.

Yesterday we took a stroll in Lille. It was Easter Monday, and while everything here in Belgium was closed, in Lille almost all the shops and cafés were open. It felt like the whole world had come out, because it was the first truly sunny day that wasn’t cold.

The war is still going on, and I admit that I no longer understand why.

I know why the Israeli government is doing it, for sure. And even though I would like to see the regime in Iran fall, I cannot ignore the fact that Netanyahu and his government didn’t even manage to replace Hamas in Gaza. I don’t understand why people are buying into the illusion that the Iranian regime will collapse quickly. Iran is not Syria.

Rockets are flying over Israel day and night.

Last week, pieces of an intercepted rocket landed very close to my mother’s home, twice. In central Israel this has become a daily occurrence. Friends and family hear explosions all the time, often very close to home.

Yesterday there were almost 30 different places where rockets hit. Two days ago, an entire family was killed in Haifa. It took rescue teams 18 hours to retrieve all the bodies from the debris.

The media in Israel, apart from Haaretz and some independent publications, is barely challenging the government. Netanyahu releases a recorded message once in a while, and it is broadcast as if this is a legitimate way of governing in a democracy.

Yesterday I looked at the short updates and was amazed to see a picture of a ruined building in central Israel covered with a flag. The caption said: “After the building in Ramat Gan took a hit, the house was covered with a flag and the street returned to its daily routine.”

This was Channel 12.

What kind of routine are you talking about?
People are in their homes. Schools are closed. Many workplaces are shut down. The airport is practically closed.
Is this a routine? Are we even living in the same universe?

I spoke with one of my sisters yesterday and she told me about all the places she had to run to for shelter during an ordinary day.

Once in the supermarket.
Once in her car, she had to stop and look for the closest shelter.
Once on her way to a patient.

And then there is the exhaustion, sirens in the middle of the night, waking everyone up, and afterwards nobody can fall back asleep.

At the same time that four soldiers were killed in Lebanon- something the government already knew- the parliament passed a law allowing the state to execute Palestinian murderers (but not settlers who murder Palestinians).

Ben Gvir raised a bottle of champagne in a stomach-churning photo to celebrate the occasion. This is a government that celebrates death as victory.

I am still waiting to see whether this law will pass the Supreme Court.

And these are only the things I paid attention to. I ignored many others.

And while the fragility of life is being reminded to us day and night, I cannot stop thinking about this week.

First, a very old neighbour, 90 years old- passed away.

Then a colleague of ours, another baker, had to close his bakery for a while because his wife is about to die from cancer (and while I am writing this post we received a message about her passing). We spoke with him this week and he cried. He said he doesn’t see any point in moving on. We told him that this is the shock and the sorrow speaking, and that now he just needs time to be with her and not think about the future.

She was in her sixties.

And yesterday, an Israeli woman I follow on YouTube, someone I had many exchanges with online, shared that her youngest son, a teenager, had taken his own life. This came only a month after their house was hit by a rocket from Iran.

A beautiful boy.

Of course, a woman reaching the age of ninety is not a surprise, and I hope that I will reach such an age as well. But these three people in one week, all so different from one another, made me feel how little time we might actually have, that life can end at any moment.
I don’t even mean this in a sad way.

If there is something I have learned in the last three years, it is how fragile we are, as Sting sings.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that life is too short to spend it being angry. We should think about how we use our time on this planet.

What are we doing while we still can?

Are we working toward our goals, our wishes, our bucket lists?
How do we treat the people we love- and those we don’t?

Do we spend our time spreading fear, hate, or frustration?

A businesswoman I follow in Israel recently wrote in her newsletter about how angry and worried she is. One of the responses she received infuriated her: someone sent a sort of “new age” message saying that the war has an important purpose (spiritually) and that we must return to the light.

She replied that the person who wrote that probably never had to send their children to fight in Gaza or lost someone they love in a war.

She quoted James Baldwin:

“I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

She used this quote to explain how her harsh criticism comes from love for her country. She then spoke about Arundhati Roy and her political activism.

I answered her that although I share many of her feelings about our government, I also choose to remember Viktor Frankl and the need to find our why.

It is not that sadness, anger, or even rage are illegitimate ways to respond to these events. They are completely human.

It is simply that I personally cannot thrive, or find the motivation to continue- if that is the only place I stand. I also do not want to “be the light” in the shallow way that many new-age voices talk about it.

But I also refuse to become the kind of human being who forgets what it means to be human.
I allow myself to feel these emotions, but only for a short time, and then I try to find a constructive outlet for them.
I also remind myself that I have the privilege of living outside a war zone, for now, and that perhaps I would feel the same after six weeks of constant bombardment.
Even though most of my family and friends are living through it, even though I lived through wars myself.

That’s it for today. I am sharing one of my favourite channels these days on Youtube. It is constantly playing in our living room, I hope it will bring you some calm.