I found one of my favourite places in Israel today: a beautiful, massive, well-tended park. The park is liberally gifted with fruit trees, including some of the Shiv'at HaMinim, the Seven Species of produce with which the Land of Israel is notably blessed.* But besides the trees, the grass, the tranquility and the rolling masses of space dedicated to peaceful recreation and relaxation, I was most enthralled with the children.
Children are special. Or at least, children are people whose specialness easily shines outwards, whose specialness is not yet clouded by the deadening habits and ways of a society of norms, convenient character-boxing, and dismally low self-image. Children don't care what the world thinks of them. Children see the world without self-deception; they believe what they see, and they engage in it with totality. If a child is sad, he cries. If a child is happy, he dances and sings and smiles. Contrast with the world of 'grown-ups': if an adult cries, we assume there is some mortifying tragedy whose grief has caused this person to lose control. If an adult would start singing and dancing and smiling and laughing, most people would assume that he had lost his mind.
Why must it only be the children who taste life undiluted? Why must it only be the children who see things as they truly are? Why do we have to paint masks over our faces, cramp and constrict our ways, thoughts, ideas: our very souls? Why must we deaden and dull ourselves, to live emotionally constricted, experientially choked existences? We need to do some serious lightening up; we need to live with freshness, eagerness, innocent curiosity, and deep, honest passion. The child within us is still alive. Let it play! And sing and dance and cry and love and smile...
Of course, our experience and life lessons learned teach us things that children don't know, such as considering other people with more profundity and broadness, such as the necessity for rules and order and systems ('Why can't I have chocolate before I go to bed?!'), such as becoming more in touch with ourselves, with those people around us, and with G-d, such as understanding that our actions bear consequences in the world... But even so, such life's lessons don't need to weigh heavily upon us. We often get lost in the rules and systems and norms, and forget that they're only there to create order, and not to determine the very essence of who and what we are...
I love children. And when I see them, living life with no instructions or rules or restrictions on how they should feel, experience, live, I am inspired and refreshed. The children remind me to live in reality. The children inspire me to live passionately. The children remind me to throw away worry of what anyone else will think of me, but to listen to my soul, and to live, real life, like I once knew how...
So, what's special about the park; why is it now one of my favourite places? And what's special about the children of Israel? Look out for my next article in this series: Children of Israel - Part 2
Picture from here.
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* 'For HASHEM [G-d] your G-d is bringing you into a good land: a land of rivers of water; springs and depths coming forth in the valley and in the mountain. A land of wheat and barley, and grape and fig and pomegranate; a land of olive oil and [date] honey' - Devarim 8:7-8
Children are special. Or at least, children are people whose specialness easily shines outwards, whose specialness is not yet clouded by the deadening habits and ways of a society of norms, convenient character-boxing, and dismally low self-image. Children don't care what the world thinks of them. Children see the world without self-deception; they believe what they see, and they engage in it with totality. If a child is sad, he cries. If a child is happy, he dances and sings and smiles. Contrast with the world of 'grown-ups': if an adult cries, we assume there is some mortifying tragedy whose grief has caused this person to lose control. If an adult would start singing and dancing and smiling and laughing, most people would assume that he had lost his mind.
Why must it only be the children who taste life undiluted? Why must it only be the children who see things as they truly are? Why do we have to paint masks over our faces, cramp and constrict our ways, thoughts, ideas: our very souls? Why must we deaden and dull ourselves, to live emotionally constricted, experientially choked existences? We need to do some serious lightening up; we need to live with freshness, eagerness, innocent curiosity, and deep, honest passion. The child within us is still alive. Let it play! And sing and dance and cry and love and smile...
Of course, our experience and life lessons learned teach us things that children don't know, such as considering other people with more profundity and broadness, such as the necessity for rules and order and systems ('Why can't I have chocolate before I go to bed?!'), such as becoming more in touch with ourselves, with those people around us, and with G-d, such as understanding that our actions bear consequences in the world... But even so, such life's lessons don't need to weigh heavily upon us. We often get lost in the rules and systems and norms, and forget that they're only there to create order, and not to determine the very essence of who and what we are...
I love children. And when I see them, living life with no instructions or rules or restrictions on how they should feel, experience, live, I am inspired and refreshed. The children remind me to live in reality. The children inspire me to live passionately. The children remind me to throw away worry of what anyone else will think of me, but to listen to my soul, and to live, real life, like I once knew how...
So, what's special about the park; why is it now one of my favourite places? And what's special about the children of Israel? Look out for my next article in this series: Children of Israel - Part 2
Picture from here.
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* 'For HASHEM [G-d] your G-d is bringing you into a good land: a land of rivers of water; springs and depths coming forth in the valley and in the mountain. A land of wheat and barley, and grape and fig and pomegranate; a land of olive oil and [date] honey' - Devarim 8:7-8
