It was an unbearable movie, at least for me(1). I don’t even think that I sat through the entire performance. I’m pretty certain that I walked out in the middle. None-the-less that expression has played through my mind a great deal lately. I don’t know why!
In a way I suppose it expresses a series of sensations that I’ve experienced over the past few months. Fleeting ephemeral sensations of watching myself from outside myself. At the same time, there was no panic. No sense of “whats happening to me”, only a wondrous sense of awe as I had the opportunity of viewing my surroundings and the people who populate it with an overwhelming feeling of appreciation. I can only express it in words by alluding to the famous scene in the Godfather when Don Vito Corleone, in the throes of a fatal heart attack, grabs a handful of earth from his tomato patch and whispers “la vita è così bella“(2) in his dying breath.
It’s not as if I’m having an out-of-body experience. Its more that I’m blessed with a short momentary insight into what life is really all about, and let me share with you – life is overwhelmingly beautiful! Not just the land on which I live, nor just the sky under which I walk but also the people I meet and interact with, and even those that I don’t. It’s as if the blinkers that filter out the marvelous complexity of life to enable us to function without being overwhelmed by infinite details is but for a moment lifted. Instead of the mundane and sometimes annoying existence, I become aware of the absolute endless complexity and intricacy and interdependency of what it takes to … grow a leaf; to blink an eye; to feel the wind; to sense the hardness of a stone in my hand; to distinguish the chirping of one bird from another. I could go on and on, but you either understand what I’m talking about or you are searching for that shrink’s contact information to pass on to me.
It’s true, at age sixty, I’m much closer to the end of my personal journey than I am to its beginning. In fact my wife and I often remark that we don’t quite understand how we arrived at this august age – we both still feel like we’re barely in our thirties (well maybe forties, at least me). None-the-less I can feel a certain sense of sadness after these fleeting insights fade from my consciousness. If only I had been so sensitive in my youth, wouldn’t I have perhaps behaved with less selfishness? If only we were all blessed to experience these appreciations of the utter awe-inspiring reality of life, I hesitate to say, the holiness of life, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to fight three wars nor to fear that I or my children are constantly the targets of hatred and bigotry simply because they are Jews.
Our sages say that three times a year the Jewish People would travel up to Jerusalem for the three festivals (pilgrimages?). During each there would be an amazing ritual when the Cohenim, the people’s representatives serving in the House of G-d, the temple, would speak aloud the biblical blessing (3)(4). Our tradition says that during these tremendous peak experiences, everyone present felt the presence of the source of all being. I can only imagine that what they felt was an incredible lightness of being!
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), written by Milan Kundera
- “Life is so beautiful”
- Numbers 6:23–27
- The Priestly Blessing, some insights from a friend
