Whenever I sat down to think about this week's blog post, my mind would stay on task for a few minutes before being distracted by news coming in from Israel--reports of rockets, missiles, air strikes, and sirens. No matter how hard I tried to focus on philosophical issues, I always ended up dwelling on current events in the here and now...so I decided I needed to write about that.
As much as I relish a rich political debate, I don't want to have one here. The more I learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the more I realize I will never be able to sort through all of its complexity. To be honest, right now I am relatively uninterested in the nitty-gritty details of that complicated history. What occupies my mind is something much more basic:
People I love are in danger, and I'm not able to help them.
For me, this is what it boils down to. In my mind, Israel is no longer just a place where a lot of Jews live. It is the place where my friends and teachers live, where I lived this past summer, where I have learned and grown and shared and connected. The land of Israel is a place where I feel at home, and the friends I have over there are some of the people dearest to me in the entire world. This week, I talked with friends of mine whose lives had gone from mundane to surreal in a matter of hours; I read about rockets landing near the communities of two of my teachers; I found out that my friend's husband was called up to the army; I heard about sirens going off in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. My best friend told me about how she and her coworkers ran for cover when they heard a siren, and this morning I started my day by reading headlines about a public bus bombing in the city where she lives. As I go about my days in my relatively safe neighborhood far across the world from the center of the action, I can't help but notice the pit I feel in my stomach or the way my breath often stops just short of actually reaching my diaphragm. I am aware of my fear, my frustration, and my sense of helplessness--and my need to manage all of those emotions effectively in order to keep living my life.
Historically, I've not done well with handling anxiety over things beyond my control. My mind spins and whirls around the what-ifs, and I tend to need more reassurance than usual that no news does not, in fact, mean bad news. In early recovery I started learning about the "cognitive distortions" in which I often engaged: catastrophizing, emotional reasoning, jumping to conclusions...those were but a few of my favorites. For a long time, I dealt with helplessness, fear, and anxiety by exercising or starving them into oblivion. At this point in my journey, though, clearly I need some new strategies...and this past week has given me an opportunity to practice the coping skills that I've worked hard to develop.
Here's what has worked so far: I try to keep my consumption of news reports to a reasonable amount, as opposed to keeping Israeli news sites up in my browser for the entire day. I don't check the news late at night, when I need to be relaxing in preparation for sleep. I make an effort to curtail the number of emails I send to my friends--enough to satisfy my need to know they're safe, but not so many so that taking care of my anxiety becomes another problem on their plates (okay, so my best friend still gets a lot of emails...but isn't that what best friends are for?). When I say the prayer for peace every day, I say it with more feeling, more kavannah. I signed up for the Shmira Project, started by two families affiliated with Livnot U'Lehibanot, one of my favorite Israeli organizations. And, I've tried to shift my focus from what I can't control to what I can...how can I bring light to the lives of the people I care about in Israel? How can I bring light to the lives of the people I care about here?
Two hours ago, a ceasefire went into effect. I'm hopeful that it sticks, and that the rockets that have continued to rain on southern Israel will slow to a trickle, then to nothing. I hope that life gets back to normal for my friends and teachers, and that soon we will return to thinking and talking about matters not related to national security. Finally, I hope that this week when I wish them all a shabbat shalom, that's exactly what it will be.
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