Despite my children’s belief that boundaries make me a terrible parent, setting clear expectations and limits is a critical part of parenting. What’s important isn’t that they like the rules, it’s that they understand them.
Two days ago, the Czech novelist, Milan Kundera, died at the age of 94. I was in college when some of his most important books were going to print, not least of which was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The work made a deep impression on me at the time, and I probably reread it three times in the following few years. At a certain point, however, I made a vow not to read it again, in the same manner that I have made commitments not to revisit certain television shows that meant the world to me when I was a boy, such as Underdog.
Unanimity is rarely achieved in any setting where different opinions are represented. One side is almost always going to be the minority. Yet, putting the SCOTUS appointment process aside for a moment, even when there are “winners” and “losers,” there’s still something reassuring about being part of a greater deciding body.
I recently stumbled across a story about how we sometimes do things we don’t mean to do, written by Anne Peterson, a prolific Christian author. She recounts an autobiographical incident in a piece called “I Didn’t Mean to Hurt Her,” about the struggles she had with her mom when she was a teenager. They got in a fight and the next day, her forty-three-year-old mother was wheeled out of the house on a gurney. Game over.
Do you have a will? How about an advance medical directive? Have you shared your burial wishes with someone, in writing? I know that these questions can be uncomfortable to answer, as they immediately remind us that our time on earth is finite, but it’s imperative to make these plans not just for your own peace of mind, but also as an act of love and respect to those who will be alive and carry on in your absence.
The first time I watched the Mos Eisley Cantina scene in A New Hope, the original Star Wars film, it made a lasting impression. The motley collection of aliens was exotic and decidedly otherworldly. We had never before seen anything like that on the big screen, but it doesn’t require a science fiction film to induce that sort of experience. We all have those moments when the weirdness of life takes away our breath.
As Jews, so much of what we do falls under the “we do this because we’ve always done this” reasoning. In large measure, that’s true, but the ways in which we question and then change those traditions are also distinctly Jewish.
