I have always loved Nature. Walking in the woods and walking on a deserted beach have always been favourite pastimes of mine. Sometimes, I have envisioned living in Northern Ontario or on a Hawaiian beach, (Now that I'm older, definitely the Hawaiian beach. Too cold in the north.) For some mysterious reason, this appeals to me.
I have also admired people who left everything behind and set off into the wild in order to live 'authentic' lives. Davey Crockett was a real hero of mine when I was six. I thought he was about as authentic as you could get. Then I became hooked on books. John Steinbeck can still move me to tears. He was the real deal when it came to observing humanity and its frailty. But did he live an authentic life? Not so sure. Maybe when he travelled the country with his dog.
I remember when I first encountered the raw passion of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I was thirteen. Didn't understand most of what he had written but I certainly could feel his emotion. It was the same with the idealistic yearning of Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond. I never realized until later in life just how poignant and brilliant this man's writings were for me. I remember when I first read these words of Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
"Live deliberately..." Seriously? How does one live deliberately? I've asked myself that question so many times: How do I live deliberately? How do I figure out how to live at all?
Recently I read a fascinating book by Jon Krakauer called Into the Wild. It is a true story about a college graduate named Chris McCandless who hitchhiked to Alaska in 1992 and walked alone into the wilderness. He had donated all of his savings to charity, left behind all of his possessions and burnt all the cash in his wallet. In the end, this young man dies of starvation. Some have dismissed his journey as foolish and irresponsible. But others who have read about his journey believe that Chris was sincere in his beliefs and at least had the courage to try to live according to them.
He wrote during his journey: "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon," (Krakauer, Into the Wild, p. 58)
Quite a statement, isn't it?
Since my earliest years, I have been enthralled with nature. Everything fascinated me from the tiniest flower to the grandest ocean and the creatures living there. I didn't get to actually see an ocean up close until I was a nurse, but from that first glimpse and then my first swim - I immediately knew that Hashem existed. I believe most children are like that, constantly longing to be outside, being part of nature, and to just be part of the hugeness of the universe. Feeling free.
I feel more a part of the universe, like I belong to it, when I'm diving between the ocean's waves. While snorkelling in the Molokini crater, I stared at colors and fish, and shapes that whispered of unknown worlds, waiting to be discovered. My heart swells with joy and love when I meet dolphins and whales and my first thought is to ask them about what they see and know.
When I think a bit more deeply about this incredibly strong physical and emotional pull to the wild, I wonder why this happens to me. Many people walk into the wild in order to escape one's inner turmoil. Get away from it all. Find some peace and quiet. Block out the pressures of life by distracting oneself with nature's beauty. I do that lots of times.
But is there more to it? I think maybe there is, only it takes far more courage to face or explore. And that is to walk into the wild in order to go towards one's self. You can find yourself anywhere on a path in the forest, and for many of us it's a pretty scary thought to actually come face to face with yourself. Most of us do not like who we are.
I think maybe, perhaps somewhere since Rosh Hashana, I learned how to do this. How to hike over mountains in order to bring the peace of the earth and the sky into my own home and heart. How to dive beneath the water in order to instill that sense of wonder and adventure in myself and in others. Certainly walking amongst the giant Sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park, California, I faced myself...and a bear. Not sure which one was scarier.
And it is during this time of year, I begin thinking about the wilderness of the desert that we crossed through as a Nation. I think about the glaring sun and the vast, unknown spaces. It's those unknown spaces that are frightening. I think about the silent, star lit skies and the miles of endless sand. And I think I'm starting to understand why it was so hard for the Jews to leave Egypt.
Not only did they have to leave behind the comfort of the familiar, but they were not going to the desert in order to escape. They were escaping the Egyptians, and that was an exhilarating thought, but leaving meant facing an even more intimidating enemy: the weaknesses inside of them.
Here's a little known fact: even though they were slaves in Egypt, not all of the Jews left with Moses. It is said that four fifths of the Jewish nation chose to stay! They preferred to stay in a place where they knew what was physically expected of them, and where they knew they would remain in servitude until they died. Why? Maybe because they were free of spiritual obligations to God. The minority of us Jews who crossed the sea and ventured into the desert were not journeying towards a place of freedom from those noble obligations.
We were on our way to Mt. Sinai to find out what our responsibilities would be towards each other and towards the world around us. We were journeying towards the truth inside of ourselves which sometimes can only be found in those frightening wide, unfamiliar spaces. And most importantly, we were not alone. Our Creator, Hashem, was guiding us and helping us temporarily shed the limits of our physical selves.
With His help, we were journeying towards the truth inside of ourselves. We lived in homes that could be taken down and re-built in a few minutes. We ate food that dropped down from the sky, Manna. We didn't need the leaven-saturated existence of stable, material structures. We lived by the simplicity of what matzah is. No time to stand around and let the dough rise. No time to stay in one place when there are so many miles to cover before it's too late. Too late for what they must have asked. We lived by the clouds and stars, by those pillars of fire on the shore of the Red Sea, by the Divine words filling the desert silence.
And every Pesach, we all enter the wilderness of that desert once again. We ask ourselves if we can temporarily leave behind the familiar expectations and conducts in our lives. Can we make room in our homes and inside of ourselves for a new journey to begin? And can we use the beauty and excitement of our journey to learn who we are and what our responsibilities are? After so many years of reading our Haggadah and going through the rituals of Seders, I finally believe the answer is yes.
So here it is folks, Passover once again. We all leave Egypt every year at this time and Hashem gives each of us each the opportunity to let go of our limited, narrow-minded perspectives of life and venture into the wilderness inside of us. But the question is: What do we do when we emerge from the desert? How do we use the gift of our journey through the desert? Do we bring the miraculous into our everyday consciousness or do we relegate it to the pages of the Passover Hagaddah? And that is where real courage is found. Not in escaping into the wilderness, but in using the wilderness to reach the truth within ourselves.
So my prayer for everyone at this Passover is simple: May you reach the truth within you during this season and bring the miracles around us into your everyday life. Amen.