LatinosUSA

Introduction: On the Road Again

Twenty years ago, when my family made aliya, my primary responsibility was caring for our children. Blessedly, those boys and girls have since grown into young men and young women, some of whom already have children of their own. Accordingly, at present, my main familial duty is pampering my grandchildren.

Correspondingly, any internal pressure with which I’m living is self-sourced (vs. the externally-wrought burdens of decades ago that consisted of my offspring bringing their school and relationship issues to me). For this reason, earlier, whenever I yearned to join a women’s getaway (when my family had the necessary funds and when my husband could cover childcare for me), I felt no compunction. These days, in contrast, given my altered obligations, I’m more hesitant to pay to relax.

Furthermore, I haven’t aged gracefully. I have digestive ills. I have trouble walking. I continuously have to exercise caution because of a sustained back injury. So, I usually don’t venture far from home by myself.

My husband, however, thought that my physical challenges constituted an inadequate reason for me to sidestep unwinding. He posited that, if anything, my corporeal ills require me to take a break, not to avoid one. So, he urged me to release my everyday concerns for forty-eight hours, for a brief vacation.

I appealed to my health care providers and to my rabbi for support for my position. Every one of them concurred with my Help Opposite.

As much as I clung to the perspective that I didn’t deserve such largesse, I signed up for a quick trip and paid the requisite fee. Even so, I felt guilty about using my family’s time and money for a solo holiday. Likewise, I worried about how my limited mobility might impact my trek.

Hubs deconstructed my first set of concerns by claiming that our saving for tomorrow is pointless if I don’t arrive at our shared future. What’s more, my physiotherapist dismantled my second set of apprehensions by showing me how to use Nordic walking sticks. She was confident that I would be able to wobble among the resort’s buildings. Additionally, the event coordinator asked me for a list of the sorts of help that I might need so that she could provide aid. Besides, the friends that I made at the retreat graced me with more offers of assistance than I needed.

So, I liberally applied inflammation-reducing salve to my knees, took rests, and practiced the kind of humility concomitant to being physically compromised. More exactly, I solicited other women to carry my tea across the place’s expansive cafeteria, asked a new associate to shlep my luggage to the checkout (Hubby had schlepped it into my room before dropping me off), and forewent programs offered at the grounds’ distant corners.

I’m grateful to be able to share that my limitations did not reduce the improvements that I gained from the goings-on nor curbed my fun. More precisely, I did what I could; I made an effort to appreciate my vacation days.

I think my favorite part of my time off was the food. It was not so much that I was eager to try someone else’s cooking as that I was eager to talk with other women. I arrived at both breakfasts when the dining hall opened and lingered there for nearly the entire three-hour duration of each of those meals. Whereas I ate fairly modestly, I quaffed as many conversations as possible.

I used to be a rhetoric professor, an educator who empowered students with verbal skills such as public speaking. As of late, conversely, I’ve devoted the greater portion of my time to, BH, fulfilling book contracts. Writing, unlike teaching (especially if one includes office hours and informal, leisurely chats with students), is a self-contained vocation. When I write, I let calls go to voicemail, and I ignore Internet communications. Consequently, breaking free of my customary solitude was a change.

Furthermore, while on my shortcation, I enjoyed many opportunities for making visual art. Although I’ve been blessed to have my digital paintings and photographs incorporated within literary journals, as well as on their covers, I’ve rarely put aside time for messier modalities. During my excursion, the other way around, I used watercolors for calligraphy and flower bouquets, cut and paste a mandala with actual glue and paper, and snuck off campus to a recycled materials studio, where I assembled a three-dimensional work employing glass tiles, ceramic tiles, and gouache paint. Overall, my inner child was delighted with her many prospects for playing with line, color, and space that were offered by my break in usual proceedings.

While admitting that I’m too weak for beach hikes, yoga, or creative dance, all of which I adored when I was able-bodied, and all of which were major elements of the wellness jaunt, I participated in meditation circles and in breathing classes. Into the bargain, on the last morning of the escape, I hobbled around the destination’s property and shot pictures with my compact camera.

I prized the quiet (I opted for a solo room), the reliable hot water, the chance to catch up on Dvrai Torah, and the slower pace. Rest, in any case, is a comparative commodity. I benefited, on the one hand, from greater spans of serenity, and, on the other hand, from accessing more people and more inventive outlets than what’s ordinary for me.

I’d gladly take time off, again. Sometimes, I forget that even though I’m a wibbly-wobbly grandma of fairly modest means, it behooves me to recharge.

Like Packing for a Trip

Preparing for a new year is like packing for a trip. We begin by amassing all the bits and bobs that we believe are key to our journey. However, after eyeballing our luggage, we tend to return many possessions, admitting that skirts can be worn for two consecutive days and owning that we don’t need to bring five sets of brogues.

Sure, we employ hacks such as rolling clothing, filling pouches that organize and compartmentalize items, and wadding jewelry, socks, and cosmetics into shoes to maximize available space. For all that, we often find ourselves sitting on our trunks or otherwise using force to latch them.

Further, nearly always, on reflection, we appreciate that we hadn’t needed everything that we stuffed into our suitcases. Upon loading our sedans or arriving at airports, we regularly discover that our jam-packed valises are over-heavy. Our struggles to press edited bodies of objects into our gear get thwarted. Either we must discard more things, buy supplementary gripsacks, or pay fines in muscle strain and cash for our provisioning.

In the same way, a new year challenges us to condense our desires for our future into manageable asks. We learn to reshelve many of our aspirations, i.e., to shrink our ambitions. Whereas Hashem’s storehouse of blessings is infinite, our ability to provide the toil necessary for receiving them is limited.

Additionally, nearly all the time, we discover that we didn’t really require the aggregate of our downscaled requests. We didn’t need the dreamed-of titles, wealth, or beauty. We didn’t need our lives to be perfect. To be more precise, if we suddenly lacked flaws, we mightn’t stretch as recurrently and as intensely toward HaKodesh Baruch Hu, and we mightn’t attempt to reconcile our human relationships.

Even if we thought we had properly adjusted our massed expectations, we repeatedly get the message that we exceed our limits. Whereas The Aibishter’s energies are boundless, ours are not. It’s nice to retain high hopes, although it’s heartening to enjoy modest ones.

Further, when traveling, time and again, the unanticipated can and does occur. Rigs go missing, food poisoning happens, and pickpocketing is frequently experienced. Yet, dolphins gift tourists with starfish, people find true love when exploring museums, ascending peaks, or waiting in guesthouse lobbies, and the majority of us feel reinvigorated from our explorations.

Also, we might discard effects along the way to make room for souvenirs or other niceties that are not usually available to us. We might have items break in our travel bags, and, in turn, ruin cherished movables. We might have our luggage lost en route home.

During a fresh year, we customarily experience surprising challenges and unforeseen delights. In the first instance, we might, v’shalom, undergo unpredicted health crises, financial losses, spiritual setbacks, or war. In the second instance, we might, IYH, live through the birth of a new generation in our families, unearth promising employment, become spiritually elevated, or become encompassed by peace (Moshiach is on his way.)

Irrespective of our experiences, once we’ve completed our travels, we unpack the satchels into which we’d earlier squeezed our stuff. During a brand-new year, we assess our progress by deconstructing our intentions. Maybe, after the passage of a few months, we’ve chosen to abandon select principles to create space for higher living or to replace the importance that we once assigned to particular thoughts, words, and deeds.

It’s normal for us to be astounded by the deterioration of discrete facets of our inner lives, and how such depreciation influences the devaluation of other factors. Grievously, it’s also true that because of dear ones’ deaths or because of other tremendous losses, there are occasions when a year empties us.

In hindsight, the frustrations concomitant to packing and the risk of forfeiture that’s part of travel rarely deter us from scaling up. The decreased stress plus improved creativity and confidence that usually result from trekking are greater than most expeditions’ shortfalls. It’s rare to identify individuals whose misgivings about trying to improve their lives prevent them from attempting to right wrongs or to otherwise tweak themselves.

Every day that’s gifted to us in Olam HaZeh is an incalculable boon. Not only does a new start empower us to better our physical and mental health, to get closer to The Boss, and to live in greater concord with our dear ones, but every day that’s allowed to us, here, is an excursion to a potentially wonderful place from which we can amass the most amazing immersions.

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