Between Strength and Gentleness

What comes to mind when we hear/say the word ‘strength’ or ‘power’ is something masculine, big, physical, maybe even harsh and hard. Iron. Weapon. Muscular.  Loud.  

What comes to mind when we hear/say the word ‘gentleness’ is something feminine, miniature, lean, airy, soft. Silk. Peach-colored. Quite.  

But of course those connotations are completely socially constructed and ridiculous. They totally do not represent the deeper levels of reality, where something feminine can be powerful , masculine can be gentle, strength can be metaphysical and gentleness can be earthy.

Furthermore, the greatest challenge of all is - at least for me – to incorporate the two ideas, two forms of being, to have both attributes naturally interwoven in one person. At least this is my recent ambition (without of course losing one’s authenticity, but in fact to become authentically gentle and strong).     

How can I increase, or to be more honest, begin to re-develop my (lost?) inner-strength, while developing a new quality of gentles.

This of course requires a conceptual investigation into the nature of both concepts/attributes. 

People - justly - suggested to me that inner-strength is related to self-knowledge; and when we have this attained we can act more gently, toward ourselves and toward others.   

oh....good-old self-knowledge. The key for everything and yet so hard to obtain. So seemingly desirable and yet the very thing we are constantly running away from, knowing how scary it will be to really meet ourselves.    

"Happier At Home" - Book Review

I am not feeling well in where i live. I dont like living so far from my family and my homeland when having children. I dont like my house, my neighborhood etc. But right now it's not like i can go anywhere. So i am working on trying to make the best of what i have, of where i'm at.
Right when i started thinking about this and "working" on my inner independent "happiness" (do not like that word...) i stumbled upon Gretchen Rubin's book "Happier at Home." After few days of hesitating - i normally avoid buying books with the word "happiness" in their title - i decided to give it a try after all.
At first I read it with a genuine thirst, i found its wit funny, clever and honest. Then I realized that this book is the emperor's new cloths: It is a big book, many pages about absolutely nothing, even the photographs are bad! The author repeats the same ideas/slogans/buzz words over and over again, double spaces her e-mail correspondences and uses other old undergraduate's tricks to thicken her empty book. As a bad student she also uses the annoying phrase "study shows" like thousands times in the "book" without, by the way, ever bringing any references to those waiting-room's magazines' "studies."  Adding to that, her clear neurosis/control mania, dubbed with the pathetic attempt to justify her negative behaviors/kill-joy, it is no wonder she is looking for happiness, but i felt more sorry for her "scolded" family.
The only good thing in the book are the quotes by others, greater thinker and writers than the author..

Pure Love

My son is 3.5. He lives in two languages and there is nothing more delightful than hearing him mixing the two, and then mixing male and female speak as it is in his other language, Hebrew. But it is especially delightful when it comes to the ultimate sentence, the one in which it doesn’t matter how many linguistic mistakes one makes, it is still the single most amazing sentence in the work, especially when a 3.5 years old says it.

It is a magical stage in which the “I love you” is said with warmth and innocence, trust and faith. In humans. In the loving self. In love itself. In the beauty that wraps the lover around like a field filled with dandelions.

There is nothing more delightful than a 3.5 years old boy walks in the park, by the waterfalls, surrounded by butterflies and wild-flowers, gushed with happiness he holds his friend’s hand and says: “I love you.” Simple.

Because it is so much more than love. It is a gesture of natural ecstasy, when everything is so powerfully amazing, beautiful and scented, and all that good is translated to love.

And it is indeed a pure love. Without any hidden agenda. Without any neurosis.

It is a contagious love that makes everyone around the lover to feel relaxed and happy.

I love you Amitai.  

Amitai, 18 months old in a Dandelion Field by Lake Michigan

Politikal

Its all politik

What we eat
how much
where

what we buy
where
why

How we raise our children

Do we watch TV?
What?
How much?

Radio? which one? when?

Are we married? why? how?

Where do we live? in what house? how do we furnish it? clean it? decorate it?

Add to the list....As you wish...

Snow-White (Haiku)

"Where is she?"
Asked the little people.
The big people didn't care.

The Search Committee

Autumn

I love autumn so much, I think I started to really love it when I moved to this country, and then from the east coast to the Midwest, when autumn is really elaborated by nature and by homemakers.

I started thinking this week, why do I love it so much? What is it in this beautiful season that speaks to me more than any other, even our beloved spring?  

It’s the colors, obviously. Those bright reds, oranges and yellows, touched by browns and dark green still. It’s the scents, the natural and the invited one, like cinnamon and clove. It’s the coziness. The romance. The hominess. Or at least the potential for those.

It allows you to feel introverted, even little melancholic without suspecting that it is an actual problem.

It feels like things, people, feelings – all of which were spread all over during the summer – are all coming together again, under one roof.

Autumn (Haiku)

I love the beginning of cold
when it's not too much;
it enables the hermit in me to be without judgment

the heresy of ascetic life

All religious and mystical traditions teach us that in order to find a higher truth, i.e. meeting with god, we have to live some sort of ascetic life, namely, limited and yes, joyless. With limitations of how much, when and what we eat, sexualize, passing time etc. It is clear  - when readings those texts – that the secrets cannot and will not be revealed to those engaged in eating chocolate cakes in the sun, or those who care about the way they look etc. It gets deeper – not in the metaphysical, somehow positive sense of “deep” but just further down the hole – that if one happen to engage in reading “secular” books, spending too many hours with friends, even with kids or a spouse, then one isn’t “deserve” to receive the secrets, since anyway one won’t “get it.”

But you know what? While being “engaged” in the low activity of urinating, it suddenly made clear to me that who cares?! Who even wants to meet god if the low chances of making it happen come on the expenses of spending good time in this very life, in this very world? Who created this absurd hierarchy anyway - some schizoid individuals who came up with something that seems as a worth-justification to one’s lack ability to be nice to people and enjoy life?

You know what even more? If there is a god, and we know that god gave us this world as an opportunity, and the present as a present, then not celebrating is heresy!  

what is - what is not

I’m not the mom I wanted to be. This all(ways)-embracing apron-mama…I’m not living the life I wanted to live…in the house I wanted to own…in the location I always dreamt of…I’m not the woman I thought I should and will become…I’m not writing what I wanted to write…

Savta (grandma) says: Treat your mornings as a time-off, a well-earned vacation from life after all those years of hard work (as much as being with two little ones most day can be considered as a vacation).  Enjoy your hibernation. I can’t, I reply. I don’t know how. I feel I waste my life. I’m lazy, useless. After all, I’m my mother’s daughter. The mom that always worked, even when we wanted her around. Always and still does, even when she is officially retired.

I suddenly recalled how all those years, when I was talking and writing about the Art of Living, the idea of Being instead of Doing, wishing I was a retiree, not understanding those who felt at-lose not working.  I’m just as sick as everyone else in this society, it dawned on me. I must learn to enjoy the hibernation.  Learn to get bored with dignity, i.e. without guilt. Taking ownership of my own time without looking for ways to justify it, but simply be there, at it.

Taking those short mornings to myself, without needing to fill it with important appointments or feeling bad about “wasting” it at a café or a flea markets.

“Treat it as a vacation,” an enforced sabbatical if you wish. I must remind myself. Everyday.