"Getting There"

Photo credit: Bryan Rodriguez

April 2, 2021

You may or may not have noticed that I've stopped numbering the days. After we passed the one-year mark of living in (relative) quarantine, it no longer felt necessary or particularly meaningful to track time in that way. It reminds me a little of the practice of saying Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, for a full year after a close loved one passes away. It's not that the mourning ends, but that as the initial period of deliberate, ritualized, communal honoring of that loss comes to a close. Grief then becomes part of the landscape, no longer a singular force to be held apart from the continuation of life.

I picture a tributary leading to a vast open body of water. Come to think of it, that's how it feels now to me; there's a sense that we have perhaps exited the narrow passage of this past year and entered into the great flow of time again.

This is not necessarily an easy transition to make. And interestingly, it occurs to me as I write that we are inside the eight days of observing Passover right now, and that imagery fits exactly with the Passover story and meaning. After all, the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, means "narrow place."

Let's explore this a bit, shall we?

After the Israelites left Egypt, where they had lived and worked in bondage for 430 years, the stories go that they went on to spend 40 years making what by all rights, at least geographically speaking, could have been an 11-day trip.

Why did it take them so long to get to the Promised Land? One teaching suggests they were, in fact, ambivalent about "getting there."

Rabbi Corey Helfand writes, "This is a struggle that many people face at least one time or another in life: a reluctance to try something new, to veer off into uncharted territory, to stray from our comfort zones, all at the risk of traveling a path that is less familiar or comfortable."

Ring any bells? :)

Helfand also quotes Avivah Zornberg, a Scottish contemporary Torah scholar:

"The opposition of the road not taken (the ‘straight’ road) to the route chosen (the ‘crooked’ route) carries its own paradoxical resonance. Obviously, the straight road is preferable to the ‘crooked’; strategically, physically, and ethically; indeed, the metaphorical use of these expressions — the straight and the crooked paths — is a commonplace in ethical writings. Yet, here, the Torah makes a point of God’s not taking the obvious route … Through this opening speech at the moment of redemption, we understand that the Israelites, even at this moment, are ambivalent about the movement to freedom” (“The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus”).

As I meditate on the decision to stop counting the days in my dispatches, along with the long, twisted, often scary and confusing journey from bondage to freedom, I can't help but reflect on the pandemic and our personal and collective sense of time.

What I notice is that there is SO much "getting there" energy in the air these days.

Getting towards "normal," getting to freedom (though what exactly this means is a big conversation), getting towards herd immunity, getting towards justice -- racial, gender, socioeconomic, carceral. We want to make the trip as directly and quickly as possible, and yet. It can appear to not be happening, at least not in the way we wish. Violence propelled by ignorance and hatred continues to rise; spring breakers party unmasked and unvaccinated despite warnings of "impending doom" (those are the CDC director's actual words)... of course I could go on, but you get it.

Do you feel this, too?

Folks are fried, frustrated, impatient, or just flattened by the impact of the past year. We might be one foot out of Egypt, but the journey ahead is still daunting and uncertain. It's not as if the pain of the pandemic and the wildly uneven ways it has impacted us, depending so much on race and class and access, is over. Not by a long shot.

A tricky dance here, from my perspective, is to balance learning, which requires looking back, with momentum, which requires continued forward movement. And while this may sound counterintuitive, the best thing I can think to do to experience that balance is to stop.

Not stop altogether, mind you, but stop along the way, with intention and consistency, to regroup, take stock of where we are (including where we were and where we're headed), and make sure that we are present to the days as they unfold.

It's so easy to focus so much on "getting there" that we forget where we're trying to "get" and why it even matters. It's easy to focus so much on the needs every day presents -- and there are so many -- that we lose track of what we're moving towards. And it is also easy to get so mired in thinking about the constraints and hardships of the past that we can't see how far we have come. (Let me point out here that this also has everything to do with our writing selves/lives.)

We want things to be straightforward -- and they're not. We want things to move at the pace we want -- and they don't. We want to push the river -- and we can't. But these truths don't mean we are powerless. Rather, they offer us a chance to consider where we do have agency, and how best to use it in ways that will serve not only our personal agendas but also those of the collective, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized among us.

What "promised land" are you on your way to?
How do you meet moments of doubt or despair?
What keeps you moving and what keeps you from moving?

It can be harrowing, these middle spaces between known places, even if the known places are ones we're glad to leave behind.

Wherever these questions find you today, know that you are not alone on this journey.