Listen

Dear Diary,

Today rockets landed in Northern Israel. Everything seems to be so out of control. I'm afraid something much worse is going to happen before things get better. Hamas keeps sending rockets from Gaza and Israel keeps getting blamed for all the deaths. I just don't get it. Why can't smart people use their common sense and see that Israel is the one being bullied here?

I feel so helpless. There's nothing left for me to write - it's all been written already. Besides, who would hear me? I can pray, but I can't see the results of my prayer. I pray every day and every day there is still war. I feel guilty for sitting here in America complaining about my misfortunes. Woe is me who feels helpless. I'm safe, aren't I? Shouldn't that be good enough? Those rockets can't reach me here.

So strongly do I feel my insignificance. I am a mere pinprick in the vast enormity of the world, and no amount of "but every person matters"will convince me otherwise. I know how much effect I have on things. Zero.

What do my fears, my cries, my desperate yearnings for Israel's peaceful sovereignty matter in the great wide world? Who is listening? Who cares? I'm just an anonymous American girl who would probably get eaten alive by any well-educated Palestinian supporter who really knew how to argue. I don't want to argue. As much as I want to punch Hamas in the face, as much as it angers me to see people being so blind to what's really going on, I don't want to get caught up in arguments that serve no purpose but to rile up the other side. Any true Palestinian supporter is not going to change his mind just because I can spit back the pro-Israel script.

Sometimes it feels like no matter how much I follow the news, no matter how much I learn, no matter how much I think I know, there's always some very important fact I don't know. That always gets me in the end.

I wish I was more powerful.

Sometimes it's like the entire world has lost its mind. I know I shouldn't throw around labels, but so much has gotten so liberal, so overly tolerant, that the lines of tolerance have gotten completely blurred. Tolerance and acceptance are not the same. I can tolerate something going on, within reason of course, without giving it my okay. I am allowed to disagree with something I feel is immoral. That's not discrimination. Just because someone is not living the ideal life, just because someone seems to be an underdog, doesn't mean that person is doing the right thing. Where do we draw the tolerance line? I feel like I live in a world that is constantly apologizing for itself. Isn't that what makes it possible for terrorists to use civilian shields? Because whoever attacks those poor civilians is automatically evil? Isn't that what makes it possible for a country to give another, smaller group of people a piece of land, those people using that land to attack the first country, the first country attacking this smaller group of people in defense, and the first country ending up the horrible enemy? The terms "good" and "evil" are not as black and white as that. Why is that so difficult to see? Someone being harmed does not mean the action which caused that harm was evil. And someone being saved does not mean it was a good thing that person was saved. Good and evil are not the same as comfort and discomfort. We don't live in this world to be comfortable. We live to be moral.

This diary entry is only that. A diary entry. No one needs to read it because I'm not saying anything new. I'm saying what's already been said. Just look around. There is no need for me to speak, and so I remain silent, except in my own private thoughts, in my own writings, in my own diary.

I hope the world, one day, will learn not to be blind and will finally be able to...see.

Making Connections

I really liked this post by Northern Light.

My favorite parts were:

"It's actually GOOD that kids grow up with internet skills; just like other habits that can be deleterious if overdone, they just need to be taught how to manage them properly.

As the coauthor of a book that largely warns parents not to let kids watch TV, I've been in the habit of assuming that children should spend their time away from anything with a screen. While that's still true to a point--I still think TV is harmful, as the content is selected by the provider and not the consumer--I think there ought to be more considered comment not about how MUCH time kids spend on the computer, but exactly HOW they use it."

"I don't have THAT much time to surf blogs, or, frankly THAT much interest in most of them, but what a luscious little treat I can give myself to peek into some fascinating other worlds now and then. It's not the superficial "all about me" world of Facebook (yuk) but words written from the hearts and lives of people who are consistently fascinating and stimulating."

Just like with anything, there are positives and negatives to reading blogs. There's always an issue of safety - not everyone is who they say they are, not everyone should necessarily be befriended, etc. You have to decide what you want to expose yourself to and what you don't. But at the same time, the internet - and blogs in specific - provides an amazing forum for human connections. We can wander in and out of someone else's point of view, soaking up as much as we'd like before dipping into the opposite point of view from a different blog. We can gain a greater understanding of people - ordinary people with ordinary lives, experiences, and opinions. And yet those, perhaps, hold greater truth than the opinions of public figures. There is the world we're shown by newspapers, television, and politicians. And then there's the greater, richer world underneath - that lived in by the laymen of this earth.

The internet is not something to be feared. It takes a certain wisdom to appreciate it and to navigate it. But once you learn how, it's like a treasure hunt. There's a lot of junk, but hidden among all that are real, amazing discoveries.

I think one of the biggest problems in this world, especially among the Jewish community, is that people really just don't understand each other at all - and many are not even making an effort to. At least with blogs, the words are there. All you have to do is read them - and lots of people are too curious not to, even if they do so without commenting or telling anyone.

I once heard a quote that goes, "When all think alike, no one thinks very much." It's okay to be different from someone else. It's okay to have different opinions. In fact, that's a good thing. Discussion and debate are what make us human. Otherwise we'd all just be robots.

Everyone has a point of view. Everyone has opinions. We just have to be brave enough to share them - and we have to be open-minded enough to understand and respect those of others, even if we disagree.

Point of View - Stepping Out of the Box

As a writer, a blogger, or just as a thinking person, I find myself constantly seeking various sources of inspiration. At first, it seems overwhelming. I don't want to over-think and over-analyze because that always feels somewhat false. I don't like to make things bigger than they actually are - or bigger than I perceive them without trying too hard, anyway. But I found that when I let my mind weave in and out of the images around me, they themselves offer inspiration. It's like a different way of looking at things - not deeper, not making anything bigger than it is, just looking at them from a different angle.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, in a scene between Milo, Tock, and a curious boy named Alec who grows down instead of up (his head is always at the height he will be when he is fully grown and his feet grow towards the ground, so as a boy he walks in the air) explains it like this:

"Everyone should have his own point of view."
"Isn't this everyone's Point of View?" asked Tock, looking around curiously.
"Of course not," replied Alec, sitting himself down on nothing. "It's only mine, and you certainly can't always look at things from someone else's Point of View. For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water," he said, pointing to a bucket of water; "but from an ant's point of view it's a vast ocean, from an elephant's just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it's home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from."

Then, the epitome of seeing things from a new angle - when Milo and Tock think they are lost in the forest and are told to go ask the giant for help:

Milo and Tock walked up to the door, whose brass name plate read simply 'THE GIANT,' and knocked.
'Good afternoon,' said the perfectly ordinary-sized man who answered the door.
'Are you the giant?' asked Tock doubtfully.
'To be sure,' he replied proudly. 'I'm the smallest giant in the world. What can I do for you?'
'Are we lost?' said Milo.
'That's a difficult question,' said the giant. 'Why don't you go around back and ask the midget?' And he closed the door.
They walked to the rear of the house, which looked exactly like the front, and knocked at the door, whose name plate read 'THE MIDGET.'
'How are you?' inquired the man, who looked exactly like the giant.
'Are you the midget?' asked Tock again, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
'Unquestionably,' he answered. 'I'm the tallest midget in the world.'

And so on and so forth - the fattest thin man, the thinnest fat man, etc. The point is - the way you see things all depends on how you look at them. If you look at them in a straightforward manner, only from the front, you'll only see them in one light. But if you manage to look at them from the side, from the back, from the top, from underneath, from inside out...that's when you'll find that things are generally not stuck in one interpretation. There's always another way to see them. You just have to let yourself.

This goes for objects and ideas but, more importantly, it goes for people. Someone may seem one way, but if you try to understand where they're coming from, they may seem another. And if you try to understand them from the perspective of one of their friends, you may understand what that friend sees. The most difficult exercise is trying to look at yourself from the point of view of someone else. You may see yourself in a whole different light - and that can be scary. Scary, and yet, extremely revealing. It may help explain misunderstandings. It may help clarify why a friend feels a certain way. It's easy to see ourselves from our own points of view. I think to really know yourself is to also know how you come off to other people. True, it isn't good to judge yourself based on other people, but I think it's important to know what other people see when they see you. After all, we live in a social world. We interact with people all the time. We have to. To understand others, to understand yourself, and to understand the world, it's sometimes vital - and very interesting - to take a step back and view things from the outside. Out of the box.

Harper Lee describes this beautifully in To Kill a Mockingbird (which also happens to be one of the best books ever) when Scout is standing across the street from her house:

I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I
had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. [...] Atticus was right. One
time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk
around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

A couple of years ago on Purim, I remember bringing shalach manot to a family across the street from mine. As I turned to go home, I had the same experience as Scout. In my family, we don't generally venture across the street because we aren't friendly enough with those neighbors, so I couldn't remember seeing my house from that perspective before. It was like looking at a different house. I felt a stranger to it - like I was looking at someone else's private place instead of my own.

It's freeing, in a way, to look at things from outside of our own self-created boxes. The world becomes a completely different place. People become different. Your own role in the game of life is different. It's new and exciting and adventurous. It's fresh.

Seeing things in a new light is what gives me inspiration. It's what helps me write. It's what helps me describe things. And it helps me try to understand people and their motivations and emotions. Besides, it's fun. It makes the world less boring.

P.S. Another life lesson - "Never criticize a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Then you'll be a mile away and you'll have his shoes." - A. Nony. Mous.

How do you see the world?

Does it sometimes feel like you exist in a different world than everyone else? That you have these ideas about things that seem wrong or completely out of the blue? And people say to you, "What? where did you ever hear that?" or "How could you not know this?" or "Um, no, it's actually like such."

Where do we get wrong ideas from - especially ones that weren't specifically taught to us, but that we thought came from our own perceptions of life? Do they come from being too sheltered? From being unobservant? From reading the wrong books? From having a bad sense of perception?

Can a perspective be wrong?

And is it wrong to feel stupid for not knowing things that everyone else seems to think are obvious? Is this a flaw? Is it a fluke or is it your fault that you just never came across whatever thing it is that everyone else seems to know but you don't?

Is the world a little bit different for everyone?