Freedom?

The semester is officially over for a paltry five days..so I finally have some time.

Pesach is supposed to be a holiday celebrating freedom. We are commanded to feel as if we ourselves have left Mitzrayim. It is not a holiday commemorating a day that happened all those years ago. It is one celebrating the freedom that I, AM, is experiencing today in 2014. We sing Hallel and praise Hashem for His greatness and kindness, thanking Him for saving us from an exile that would have surely decimated us had we stayed a minute longer.

But how many of us felt that freedom Seder night? Sitting around the table with the same people as last year, reading the same words, asking the same questions, most of us barely sitting up straight from exhaustion..please tell me..how many of us felt truly free? Spiritually free? Physically free?

We are privileged to live in a time where we are physically free. We live in a time that is so politically correct, anti-semitism is not an obvious obstacle. ( just to be clear, i am painfully aware that it still lives and breathes in the US just that it is more subtle than in generations past) As for spiritually free? I have never felt less free. I recently heard this quote "the older we get the further we get from who we think we are" and it reverberated so deeply within me and scared me witless.

I often think about who I am, and how I got here and how in heavens name is this my life? Is this the person that I imagined myself to be at 25? Is this the person that I want to be the mother of my children? and the answer is usually no. I have had to allow myself some vices, and just let things be right now. There are only so many things that a person can take at a time.

Doing PA school for the second time? pretty much takes up all my head space right now. Just dealing with the fact that it is happening is painful on so many levels. I have to remind myself almost daily that this was the right decision and that Gd wants me here and this is what I am supposed to be doing. I am so focused on the right now I can't expend any extra brain space on what it is that I am doing wrong and what i need to be fixing to be the person that I am supposed to be.

Its kinda like spiritual growth has taken a sabbatical. Just working on getting through the day today and I will take on tomorrow..well... tomorrow.

When the Jews left Egypt 4/5 got left behind. They didn't want to be free. It was easier to be a slave. At least then nothing changed. Inertia took over. Staying was easier than moving. And that is the definition of death, not moving standing still while the world moves on around you. I am living like a zombie and very much enslaved..but it just has to be OK for now.

Comments

  1. Princess LeaApril 30, 2014 at 9:49 AM

    Progress manifests in the little things, the words chosen to be said, the slight more emphasis in davening. Spirituality moves forward slowly, ever so slowly.

    ReplyDelete

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