You can tell from the fact that I'm sitting here typing this on a computer at half past five in the afternoon that I'm not exactly shomer shabbas. But shabbat is something quite important to me, which is why I want to try and write something a little bit reflective every Friday here on my blog.
At the moment, I am very unsatisfied with shabbat and its place in my life - and those frustrations more or less directly echo the ways in which I'm dissatisfied with my life in general. In that sense, shabbat is a bit like an archetype, a mirror, or an ideal, that you hold reality up to and compare. Obviously, that can be a dangerous thing - a person can pine over fantasies obssessively, waiting for the right time to start living their lives in earnest, while in reality, life is busily slipping past them all the time.
I don't want to be like that. But at the same time, I don't want to turn into someone who is completely accepting and resigned to the status quo - someone with no hopes or desires or preferences about the way things should be. I suppose it's all about getting the balance right, like a lot of things in life.
It's a bit like the whole concept of "Christmas". "Christmas" has to be this perfect, rarefied thing, spent in the loving bosom of a perfect family. Obviously, this is the sort of hype that is just setting you up for a fall. Mental Health and Suicide Prevention helplines notoriously need to put on extra volunteers around the "festive period", as desperation, loneliness and self-hatred seem to build to an unbearable peak then for so many people.
I still have fantasies of the Perfect Christmas. But I'm also more aware now that these fantasies need to be put in their proper context, and always seen for what they are. The fantasy of perfection should never be allowed to blind you to the real blessings - the messy, varied, incongruous blessings - that are already in your life. As a former teacher of mine used to say (usually in relation to some timetabling or scheduling issue): the good is often the enemy of the best.
I don't have the "perfect" family, all chuckling and reminiscing while we hand-ice home-made gingerbread santas, or gathering round the fairy-lit christmas tree to sing carols and hug. And I don't get to have the "perfect" shabbat, surrounded by loved ones who share my personal spiritual outlook, adoring children looking up at me as I play Obi Wan to their Luke Skywalker, a posh kitchen warming to the delicious smells of the challah I've just made from scratch. Maybe one day I will have some of that. Maybe one day I will have all of that. Who knows? But right now, it's a fantasy. And my life right now is a reality - I have to keep sight of that, celebrate it, rejoice in it, find the beauty and the many blessings in what I actually have, and take it week by week.
Shabbat Shalom, everybody!
1 comment:
Some people in Hollywood (and in marketing) ought to be shot for convincing so many people that perfection has a particular appearance, and that we should seek it by trying to measure up to that appearance. The trick is not in abandoning notions of perfection. Nor in going out and seeking perfection. The trick is in noticing the abundance of perfection already around you.
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