I have had great difficulty summoning the desire to blog.
Whew, that was hard for me to admit.
Let me clarify.
There have been many blog worthy events and many mental sparks of "I'll blog about this later" that have occurred over the past month. Some of which include our Memorial Day weekend trip to Virginia Beach, the most amazing donut place I have ever been to in my life, and our 8th anniversary celebratory dinner. However, a few things have been holding me back.
Initially what paused my writing was this personal notion that my blog needs to undergo some changes. I have been hoping to give my blog a face-lift by combining both of my blogs into something fresh and even better than before. A name change combined with a search for what my mission as a blogger is have had me stumped for a few weeks now.
However, it was last weekend that really shook me, tugged at my hair, looked me straight in the eye and told me it was time for more than simply cosmetic changes.
With the exception of Christmas movies, it isn't often that Hubby and I use our movie time to watch a movie we have already seen before. There are so many new movies out there, so many movies just waiting for us to enjoy them, that we run out of time to revisit old ones. There are certain classics that will creep their way in once one of us has mentioned to the other a few dozen times that we want to watch them again.
I had been mentioning to Hubby a few movies of a certain genre that I wanted to watch.
He dubbed last weekend "Jewish weekend" and we watched all of them. Friday night we watched "The Pianist", Saturday we watched "Fiddler on the Roof", and Sunday night we watched "Schindler's List". If you haven’t seen any of these movies, make it a point to watch them soon. Here is just a brief glimpse:
In The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, a once famous Pianist, finds himself alone in hiding. As a musician, I can’t fathom the torture Wladyslaw Szpilman felt to be hidden in a room with his instrument but to have to remain completely silent for fear of the Nazis finding him. To be so close to something he loved, yet to have to suffer starvation and cold alone, without even the warmth of his instrument to comfort him.
Tevye, the much loved character for which Fiddler on the Roof was almost named, gives us a cultural understanding of the ways of the Jews. Traditions aren’t merely something a few generations followed, but rather all generations. We watch Tevye humanly question God, and then saintly trust in him.
In Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler transforms from being a member of the Nazi party and an industrialist out to earn all he can for himself, to a man giving up everything in order to add another name to a list of Jews to be released from a concentration camp.
Since last weekend, I have been unable to shake this lingering feeling of shame towards the selfishness and self-centered expectations that continue to pollute our society. I find myself disgusted with the fact that I spend my time more interested in blogging about food and travel than in writing about ways to better help mankind.
As I watched the unforgettable final scene of Schindler’s List, where Schindler is suddenly gripped with sorrow over the realization that he could have saved one more life, maybe ten, I couldn’t help but be sickened by the fact that most of my time is consumed with thinking of personal interests.
There are so many hurting people, hurting for reasons stretched so vastly we could never name them all. So many people wake up each day to their own version of hell while our selfie society hides behind artificial walls of perfection we have built in the form of Pinterest mommies, Snapchat teens and Instagram liars.
I’m haunted by the fact that I see more breaking down in our world than building up. I can’t sleep over thinking that one man could change the world for so many, but so many refuse to change the world for just one.
I don’t know what I will do. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m not even quite sure why I am sharing this, especially since I very much dislike rants, only it is resting on my heart like a ship’s anchor. I feel it wants to tug me to drift a certain direction, only I’m not sure where.
Does this mean I’ll never write about the things I love so much (food, travel, family, fun) again? No. But more than anything, I want to contribute positively to humanity, rather than to myself.
I want to be an Oskar Schindler.
“And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world”
Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9; Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a
