Finding the Balance

The first city I lived in in Israel looked so beautiful. It was full of trees, nice parks and manicured ‘public spaces’. Every where you looked, there were big signs telling you that you were living in the city of the future: a city where everything was planned; a city with very nice public amenities, big roads and new shopping malls; a city with three synagogues to service the needs of approximately 70,000 Jews…
 
I left that city four years’ ago, in search of a more ‘spiritual’ life. Boy, did I find it. The next place I lived in, ‘Place 2’ was almost the polar opposite of that first city. It was over the Green Line; it was full of ‘frum’ people – we had five synagogues servicing the needs of approximately 3,000 residents. It was ‘authentic’ Israel, full of people who served in the army, lived in caravans, and still cared about Israeli politics.
 
I spent three years in that second place, and they were the most intense years of my life.
 
I can’t say they were the happiest – because they weren’t. I spent most of my time there feeling very lonely and alone; I spent most of my time there trying to make lentils taste good; I spent most of my time there absolutely petrified that murderous arabs were going to break into my house, G-d forbid.
 
That’s not all I did, of course. I had so much free time, and so little money, that it was the perfect set-up to do some serious praying. I prayed for hours and hours and hours in Place 2.
 
I dug out issues and problems and bad character traits that I’d had pretty much since I was born, in Place 2. With so many things failing to go ‘right’ in Place 2, I also had the perfect set-up to practise being happy with my lot. I practised being happy with no money; I practised being happy with no friends; I practised being happy that there were tens of potentially murderous arabs with power tools all over the place…
 
It took me two years to make my peace with the fact that G-d had put me in a place I actually didn’t like very much. Within a month of that happening, we got the unmistakeable signal that it was time to move on, to a much more ‘balanced’ place.
 
Place 3, where I am now, has a lot of the trees and parks and public amenities and ‘normal’ feel of Place 1. It also has the depth of Torah, and the spirituality, and the soul-uplift that I was working so hard to find in myself in Place 2. It’s the perfect balance, at least for me.
 
Every morning, when I go for my walk-and-talk-to-G-d, I say ‘thank You’ that He put me here. I honestly feel like I’m in Gan Eden.
 
But if I’d have moved straight here from London, I would have hated it. I would have hated the quiet; I would have hated the close-knit community thing (far too claustrophobic…); I would have hated the lack of privacy and the lack of ‘buzz’.
 
It took my extreme experiences in Places 1 and 2 to make me appreciate the middle place that I’m in now.
 
Until very recently, I spent a lot of my life chasing after ‘action’ and ‘drama’ and ‘excitement’ and ‘movement’. I found all the extreme circumstances of my life extremely challenging, but also, in a weird way, exhilarating.
 
It’s like those people who like to bungee-jump off precariously tall bridges; or ski down tree-dotted cliff faces; or explore unchartered potholes. It’s dangerous. It’s traumatic. It’s potentially life-threatening – but you never feel quite as alive as just after a near-death experience.
 
If something ‘big’ wasn’t happening in my life, I didn’t feel alive. Now, thank G-d, I can go outside, and watch the sun come up, and feel alive. Now, I can have a chat with one of my daughters about something of no real consequence – and feel a real connection. Now, I can get a bunch of flowers for Shabbat, and it’s the best present in the world.
 
My life now is full of small ‘nothing specials’. I spend pretty much my whole day doing ‘nothing special’ – like the laundry, and the cooking, and the cleaning of toilets – but to me, increasingly, each chore that I do happily is a tremendous achievement.
 
I’m not earning the six figure salary of Place 1, or doing the many six hour prayer sessions of Place 2 – but I’m happy.
 
There’s nothing much to say about the middle ground, that place of slow but steady progress, where every day brings you a tiny bit closer to achieving your soul correction, and a tiny bit nearer to the Creator.
 
The middle ground is not exciting. Period.
 
But having lived life on the extreme fringes of material obsession and career, and then ascetic ‘piety’ and isolation, I can tell you that while there’s nothing much to talk about when you are in the middle, there is an absolute ton to thank G-d for. And given the choice, I’d rather be boring and happy than ‘exciting’ and miserable, any day.