Leaning into Chaos
As I sat down to write this holiday reflection, I felt really uncomfortable. You see, Purim (a Jewish festival) is my least favorite holiday.
Why??? Because Purim brings a sort of chaos that is hard for my nervous system. Growing up in a Chasidic community, I would sit in a taxi with piles of Mishloach Manot (gifts of food) and a list of where I needed to drop them off.
The traffic was horrific, as every other religious family in Monsey was doing the same, many with drunk drivers at the helm of their car. Then we would go to synagogue and watch the men and boys drink themselves into oblivion, rage, laughter, etc.
It was not fun . . . being the responsible one, needing to clean up the mess later and the next day, all while eating way too many sweets from the Mishloach Manot* I received. As I got older and began to actually read and understand the Meigillah (the book of Esther in the Tanach), its violence made me squirm, and I found very little meaning in all of it.
As Purim rolls around each year, I try to ignore it as much as possible, but it isn’t really possible. At least not for me. It is my grandmother’s yartzeit* and I usually spend the first part of the day driving up north to her tombstone to spend some uninterrupted time there. Then there is the fact that my nieces and nephew are off from school and get dressed up. Of course, they want me to engage, and I want to be with them as well. And last but not least, I belong to a synagogue that puts on a beautiful shpiel (Purim play or parody). Friends perform in it, and I want to support them.
So here I sit in this dilemma – trying to figure out what my Purim engagement will be this year and I notice, Purim feels to me very much like the world right now.
Chaotic. Violent. Scary.
And the question that I keep asking is – how much do I engage? How do I stay centered in myself, with the chaos around me?
How do I stay present to the joy this day is supposed to be and the actual feelings that come up around it for me? In other words, how do I stay present to the joy of the day to day AND the fear that creeps in?
In my upcoming book Mapito, Chapter 12 – Living in the Question, I invite readers to not necessarily know the answers to the hard questions we ask ourselves, but rather to lean into living with the question, asking it every day, and noticing what emerges.
So this Purim, I will lean into that advice. I will honor that Purim is chaotic, that it brings up all kinds of emotions and sensations for me, and choose to be present with it.
I will keep asking myself, how do I stay in the present moment and connect to joy despite everything around me? At the moment, I do not think I have answers, but I am willing to stay present with the question and the reality of the chaos, and see what emerges.
Will you join me?
Many blessings,
Chani
*Mishloach Manot – gifts of food (usually in baskets or small containers given to family and friends on Purim)
*Yartzeit – the anniversary of a person’s death, celebrated and honored in the Jewish tradition
*Shpiel – a play or parody on the Purim story (Book of Esther)
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