Free Yourself

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is miracle.”

This quote – said by the brilliant Einstein – is my mantra. Every since I discovered it while surfing the Internet one night (procrastination at its finest), it has been a guiding light for me.

It just makes so much sense.

It’s not really an inspirational quote, because it’s not a line that makes me strive for greatness or success. It’s not going to help me make my first million. (That will surely come from my first job in nonprofit).

Rather, it’s more of a perspective—a lens though which to experience the world. It’s a line I want to paint on my ceiling so I wake up always to the thought: Damn. It’s a miracle to be alive. It’s a miracle I’m free. My body is a miracle, my cells are miraculous, this whole thing we call living is one GINORMOUS miracle.

Tonight, I will kick-off Pesach with this sense of awe and gratitude; awe at the beauty of this country I live in, awe for my many blessings, and gratitude for the freedom I too often take for granted.

Yesterday, I met with a Holocaust survivor who now spends his days speaking to IDF soldiers and helping “lone soldiers" like myself.  When he found out my Garin was raising money, he added me on Facebook, gave me his number, and after I called him, he came to the Absorption center with a check in hand within two hours. 

I am always astounded when I witness the Holocaust-IDF juxtaposition. Yesterday, it hit me that my kids will never meet a man who survived the darkest persecution (because of his Jewish identity) beam with joy while handing a check to a volunteer soldier in the army of the Jewish state.

I am grateful to have bore witness to the stories of that generation, but to have been born into comfort and freedom.

Freedom.

It’s a tricky two-syllable, two-sided word.

On the one hand, I am pretty darn free. In America I was free to be a Jew. I had all the basic freedoms of democracy plus the freedom (due to a stable home situation) to pursue self-actualization, exploration, and spiritual development.

Then I was free to move to Israel, to express myself as a Jew here and take as many twists and turns and shortcuts and long-cuts as I please.

But then comes along Passover to remind me that - PLOT TWIST - we are never truly 100% free.

Yes, through the help of G-d and Moses we were freed from Egypt. And we have the Torah, which binds us to laws, morals, and rules to help us find spiritual freedom and elevation within physical boundaries.

Wait, that makes us free then, right?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, on the one hand, as Victor Frankl elucidates in his brilliant work Mans search for Meaning, we always have the freedom to choose our state of mind, no-matter how severe the physical deprivation.

Yet, despite this beautiful gift of choice, we are still only human. We are fallible. We succumb to superficiality. We let technology rule us and even worse—we let our critical minds dictate our moods, our behavior…essentially, our lives.

This year, I’m going to focus on freeing myself from “mental slavery.” Thank you Bob Marley, and Passover, for this brilliant and oh-so timely advice. Every year I strive to be more mentally free; to let go of attachments to future outcomes, to others' perception of me, to my own unnecessary self-criticism.

I am lucky to have the awareness necessary to really work on freeing myself, slowly but surely. One of the tools I find most helpful is relishing the present moment. It’s taking a pause – a holy pause – to notice the beauty in small moments. 

It’s due to this awareness that I noticed a sheet of paper hanging on my host family’s door yesterday. On this paper was a familiar quote:

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is miracle.”

Chag sameach to you all. May it be joyful, food-full, wine-full and miraculous ;)