“Other kinds of change may suddenly come to you from without. A chance meeting brings new opportunity and expansion into your life. A long-standing opportunity obstacle or conflict dissolves. Your friends either go through this inner transformation with you or drift out of your life. Some relationships dissolve, others deepen. You may get laid off from your job, or you become an agent for positive change at your workplace. Your spouse leaves you, or you reach a new level of intimacy. Some changes may look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.

There may be a period of insecurity and uncertainty. What should I do? As the ego is no longer running your life, the psychological needs for external security, which is illusory anyways, lessens. You are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it. When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change.”

On the 15th day of Jewish Calander in the month of Nissan, is the holiday Pesach (also known as Passover). This year, it fell on Monday April 18. The main purpose of this holiday originated from the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt after generations of slavery. During this holiday (it lasts for about 7 days) Jewish people do not eat grain foods (including bread, noodles, cakes, cookies, etc), which is why Matzah (unleavened bread) is popular among this time. It’s used as a replacement for all the bread we can’t have. There’s a whole story I could tell you about that I remember from Hebrew school as a child about the Jews traveling through the desert trying to escape and they didn’t have enough time to let the bread rise, which is why they have Matzah, but that’s about as in depth as I’m going to get.

Passover is one of the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays, in my opinion. I know Hannukah is the most culturally known, but as a Jew, I have more fond memories of this holiday. While Hannukah has its traditions, I think Passover is more family oriented. Passover is when you get together with family, friends, etc and the entire meal is devoted to this holiday. There is a sedar plate (certain foods represent different things) and you go around the table reading different prayers. I always remembered it as a time to be with my family, our family friends, and just having a nice evening together while always learning more about my religion and celebrating the freedom of my ancestors.

This brings me to the whole point of my post….

Over the years I’ve lost touch with my religion. I knew Passover was coming up, but I didn’t really think much of it. Last night, when I came home, I found this in my kitchen:

My grandmother, who lives with my family, had lit candles for Passover. All alone. While I was out shopping for a stupid desk at Ikea, my 88 year-old grandmother was in the upstairs kitchen all by herself saying her prayers and lighting her candles. There was no sedar plate for her this year. Something about seeing these almost-burned-out candles in the kitchen just broke my heart. My grandma, despite having lived in the US for the past 40 something years, does not speak English very well. She talks to my dad in Hungarian when he’s home, but other than that, her only real conversation she can have is over the phone to distant relatives across the country or overseas. I wish more than anything I could speak Hungarian fluently as to connect better with my grandma. Despite our language barriers, she is still able to be one of the funniest and most loving people I know. She is full of wisdom and always willing to share it with me. So, of all the days I choose not to come straight home after work, it had to be this day where my grandmother probably would have loved to share this holiday with someone.

These are some of the reasons I still think about my religion, try to recognize the holidays, and think about everything I’ve learned from my religious history. This is something that loses its importance over the generations. I don’t know many religious people, but I can tell you, the religious friends that I have are some of the most loyal, forgiving, and loving ones out there. I really think people need to focus more on their morals and what they are basing their actions on. For some people, it may be a religious reason, but it could be anything. It’s just something to think about.

I wanted to share this passage with you:

I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time – everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it’s always been.

The reason I point this out is because I feel like a lot of people live this way. At times we can get so invested in relationships and focused on giving the other person our everything, that we lose who we are. It’s not a healthy thing to do, but it happens. When you truly love someone, you want to make them happy by any means, including all the things Elizabeth listed above. I think it’s important to give that never-ending-unconditional-sure-you-can-have-the-last-piece love to whomever you choose to give it to, under one condition: it does not take away from who you are.

If you give away yourself – what are you left with?

“It’s raining, it’s pouring. But I ain’t complaining because I love the rain.”

I’m not a very poetic person most times, so I’m just going to say what I think here. Sometimes things suck, that’s life. You have to make the best of it. If you sit around and feel sorry for yourself, you’re never going to get anywhere. You have to take risks and advantage of opportunities when they are presented to you, but don’t just sit around waiting for something either. Go out and do something with your life. Be confident about it. You might fail, but you never know what could happen. A long time ago, one of my good friends advised me to always give 100% of my effort without question. If you fail, at least you have the satisfaction knowing you tried. It’s kind of what I live by now. It might sound kind of cheesy, but it works for some people.

All that from a Chevy commercial?

Do you think you truly understand yourself? Do you think it’s possible to be happy until you do? Part of growing up and maturing is finding answers to these questions and figuring out who you are. It might take some people more time than others, but ultimately, if you try hard enough, you’ll get there.

Hey, Come On Try A Little
Nothing Is Forever
There’s Got To Be Something Better Than
In The Middle
But Me & Cinderella
We Put It All Together
We Can Drive It Home
With One Headlight

If there’s a question hovering around Salinger’s mind that sparks him to create The Catcher in the Rye, it might sound something like this: What does it mean to be young and sensitive and thoughtful and hungry for connection and intimacy and trust and a few genuine souls in the world? I’ve thought about this idea for a while now. And nothing has made me more aware of this struggle than school. In class after class, I have seen that some of the most genuine souls are also the loneliest. Though I am usually helpless, it is in my nature to want to do something to change that. Usually, my hope is that through literature that this soul may come to see that he or she is not alone, that though the many communities around you suggest otherwise, being sensitive and thoughtful and trusting are in fact essential and wonderful qualities, are in fact key steps on a path to a life more attuned to the joy and beauty of life itself. If you feel deeply and think deeply, you are also, of course, more attuned to pain and sadness, but the wonders of the world, on the best days anyway, are infinite, and easily outweigh the ugliness. But it is difficult to feel as though you are the only one who sees the world as it truly is, and that can be deeply painful. We are social animals and we want trust and connection and understanding and love more than we want anything else. Too often, we replace these essentials with things like status and power and money. But those are ultimately masks, and they are ultimately empty without love.

There are two scenes from the novel that I think get to its heart, that seem to provide at least a partial answer to my take on Salinger’s question. The first is when Holden writes about Allie’s baseball mitt. Here we get the beauty and innocence, an image of the kid as pure dreamer, out there in the outfield reading poems on the glove itself. He’s playing and imagining and for Holden and for Salinger, these are virtues. And when Holden gets to his response to Allie’s death, we see the incredible pain he feels. When something pure and beautiful and inspiring dies, like a kid who knows how to play and dream, then something essential is lost in the world. Reading these pages in Salinger should make us hold on to those qualities in ourselves and do whatever we can not only to nurture them, but to surround ourselves with other souls who still know how to play and dream.

The other scene, the one that evoked in me the greatest emotional response is the scene where Phoebe meets Holden at the Museum with her suitcase and states that she is going to go with him. She is willing to skip out on her role as Benedict Arnold in the school play (another example of something both imaginative and playful) because she loves her brother; she cares about him deeply and she wants to do what she can to make him ok. When we are young, we believe that our actions, especially our ability to love, affect other people. But as we get older, we tend to lose sight of this. And Salinger suggests that this is something vital. As the poet W.H. Auden said,”We must love one another or die.”And that is Salinger’s challenge to us:to love one another, to be courageous enough to trust, to know that the world is ugly and difficult and capable of hurting us deeply,but to know also that it is through our kindness and decency and trust and love that the world comes together again, and it is that vision of wholeness for which we should always strive.

I would also  argue that there’s a difference between wanting to break a habit/realizing how much better your life would be without it and then taking it a step further to realize the negatives outweigh the benefits of continuing your habit. Not only do you have to want to stop doing it, but you need a reason to. If you’re able to convince yourself for any reason, you’ll be much better off.

So, once you make the decision that you want to quit whatever it is…you have to have control of yourself to do it. Willpower is a crazy thing. People struggle all the time with diets, living a healthy lifestyle, keep themselves from doing certain things because of lack of control. We all fight different addictions (well, I guess not everyone is addicted to something) but for the most part, everyone has their vices. It’s crazy how addicted someone can get to something, whereas another person would never even think to do that. I’m speaking so generally because I have several things on my mind.

Anyways, once you make the conscious decision to change your habits, you need to create a plan of action. Did you ever picture yourself quitting? Maybe, maybe not. It also adds another element of complexity if people do not know about your habit. How can you get support from people if they don’t know what you’re going through? Simple solution would be..just tell them about it, but hey..if only life was that easy.

I think the most difficult part of breaking a bad habit is replacing it with something else. Your time was occupied with that habit for so long, but not anymore. You need to find replacements, but  hopefully not something that is worse than what you were doing. Anyways – end of story – if there’s something in your life you want to change, put your mind to it,and there’s nothing that can stop you from completing it besides yourself.

Check it out:   http://gizmodo.com/5662271/watch-six-months-of-a-happy-meals-eternal-life

Yep. Pretty gross. Just another reason to stay away from that stuff.