All in the Mindfulness

I grew up in a generation where many of the parents were survivors. They were survivors of the Holocaust, the Depression or serious illnesses like Polio and Tuberculosis. Many parents of my generation were immigrants who struggled to learn a new language and a new culture. Despite heavy losses both financial and emotional, they managed to rebuild. They were survivors and heroes but often, due to their constant striving, lacked the ability to relax, to let go of their anxiety and enjoy life. Work was security and money meant safety. Besides, no self-respecting man would be considered a bum, even for a day. I never heard the word emuna.

In one sense this continual emphasis on work was a positive thing. We were expected to do chores around the house, walk all the way to school, and hold part-time jobs. My siblings and I were never sent to summer camp; we were expected to entertain ourselves, although we took a two-week family vacation every year to Ocean City. But even there my father had trouble relaxing. He rarely swam and did not care for the beach. It was difficult for my father to just be. He was restless.

It was even harder for him to see his kids “doing nothing”, lounging around reading comic books or hanging out on the porch. The term “chill” would have been abhorrent to him. My siblings and I learned to avoid the house on weekends, lest we be made to rake leaves, trim the hedges or even worse, wash the Venetian blinds. These jobs took hours!

My neighbor built a tree house where we would go and lie on our backs, watching the leaves ripple in the breeze. I remember gazing through the tree branches at the clouds and feeling peaceful and quiet, listening to the birds cheeping and the squirrels rustling and the growl of a lawn mower from across the street. Those were moments when I was a human being and not a human doing.

Growing up within this framework may be why so many kids who came of age in the seventies got into meditating. It was interesting to do absolutely nothing. It was challenging as well. It's not so easy to be at peace with oneself.

But people were searching for something beyond the day to day grind, or at least the reason for it. They wanted to experience something transcendental, a feeling of connection to an alternate awareness. To be part of something larger than life.

Thanks to the many programs for baalei tshuva, many Jews turned their lives in another direction and became observant, many moving to Eretz Yisroel where they raised their children to be G-d fearing Torah scholars. And this is a wondrous thing!

And yet, we can be very religious, busy all day with Torah and mitzvot, but still live on automatic and not stop to check in with ourselves. We can become just like the society we rejected, living mindlessly and obliviously while time slips away. We may be continually distracted or preoccupied, forever anticipating the next thing we'll do or else ruminating on the past.

It is so important to stop every now and then throughout your day, to just sit down and become centered. To close your eyes and just listen to the sounds around you, maybe the voices in the next room, the hum of the refrigerator, or the plane flying past.

Really tune in to your body, whether it is tense or comfortable, whether you are thirsty or your shoes are tight. Pay attention to your thoughts and let them flow through you, without any judgment. Let them come and go just like your breath. Breathe in and out and feel gratitude that Hashem has made it so easy for you to do so. Relax and rejoice in just being alive and in knowing that everything is just as it should be and that G-d is right there with you. Be at peace with the knowledge that you don't have to work so hard. You don't have to figure everything out, to fret over the past or fear the future. Hashem is running the show. He always has and He always will. But if you never live in the moment, you might miss living your own life.