I am a pessimist. And somehow I think G-d only runs my world, and everyone else’s just runs course with nature.
There are people, who I am very ashamed to admit, I have given up on. Given up on them getting married, having children and those other big milestones in life that some people have a hard time reaching (growing up, is another).
Lately though, my pessimism, and no expectation attitude has come under fire. One friend had a baby, a neighbor is pregnant, another person I care for, married for ten years, has put on her first skirt with an expandable panel (I cried when I heard that).
And then there are the engagements, classmates, who we predicted in High School would be the last ones, well, they are the last ones, but they’re doing it all the same. People who were staff members, when I was camper in camp, popping up on OnlySimchas, my sister’s sister-in-law, 42, announcing her engagement. These things are happening, all over around me.
I feel like G-d is clobbering me on the head, saying “Believe! Not just for yourself, but for other people too”.
It’s hard though. When you give up, you lose all expectation, and you just accept. Accept the status quo, you don’t fight, you don’t try and most of all you relinquish responsibility. I didn’t daven for them, I didn’t take challah for them, or say perek shira, or shir hashirim for 40 days. It was convenient for me to think they were hopeless, because then, I wouldn’t be obligated to go that extra mile. I wouldn’t worry, or feel bad every time I saw them, because I just accepted that this is who they were.
I sound terrible, cold-hearted, and selfish, I know. But part of me is also uncomfortable with the fact that I have wahat other people want so desperately, and I don’t always appreciate it the way I should (referring to children here, not marriage, that I appreciate very consciously), and maybe I have a bit of a guilty conscience. It’s a way for me to distance myself from others, make myself less uncomfortable, by putting them in a different league.
But things keep happening, Baruch Hashem. I get so happy, excited, joyous from the news, and then elated and also baffled by being wrong.
I may soon have to acknowledge my tehilim and stop being a passive observer.
Or I may be human, and wait for “one more sign”.
