What does it mean to choose life? What choice do we really have? We were put into this world, and most people only leave it against their will. (I will add here that my heart truly goes out to the ones who feel that they want to leave this world and to their families. I acknowledge that very real pain, but that is not my focus at the moment.) So does that mean that by default, as long as we haven’t chosen death, we have chosen life? I used to think so. I thought – OK, that was an easy one. I choose not to die, therefore I have chosen life.
First of all, after suffering a very deep loss, there is sometimes a tendency to want to join the person who died. To one degree or another, I think that many people experience that as part of the mourning process. But interestingly enough, I have found something else that is quite surprising. I have found that I, personally, am drawn to life in a more acute and real way. What do I mean? I’m not sure I can express it fully, but in some deep way, I am now drawn to the essence of life. I seek interactions with people who remind me that to be human is to think, to feel, to exchange thoughts and ideas.
The lockdowns have been very difficult and lonely, and I think that the main reason for that is that it seemed that life came to a standstill. We were not interacting with each other and with the world in the same way that we had been. We were just “surviving.” And that is really the point. Surviving is not choosing life.
Choosing life means choosing beauty, choosing love, choosing to think and create and produce.
Choosing life means just being at one with the essence of being alive.
Paradoxically, I think it is the close-up view of death which has taught me that. With all of the pain and sorrow, with all of the longing for what was, there is a deep, natural, inherent pull to life with all of its beauty, emotion, and – well – aliveness.
כל זמן שהנשמה בקרבי מודה אני לפניך
Shabbat Shalom