Shhhhhhh

Be private. Travel and tell no one. Find a partner and tell no one. Live happily and tell no one. People ruin beautiful things.

I saw this on IG, and . . . well, this is something I can get behind. 

Social media has its pros, and lots of cons. I don't follow people whose whole purpose is to display their lives through the editing lens to the universe. I would fall for their bushwa so fast. 

I follow informative accounts instead, and if one bikini shot goes up, one gender reveal, I click unfollow. I should not be privy to something that should be private. 

But that's an extreme. Sometimes we share too much socially, to the people we consider our friends. 

There is something to be said for privacy. The quote above didn't say, "don't post it." It says, "tell no one." We like to think, "I can tell my friends. They'll be happy for me!" 

But maybe they won't. Would you? Some people can carry that generosity of spirit and be truly happy for someone else's good fortune, but even then, they could still be struggling with jealousy. 

After I had Anakin, it was with a sinking heart that I texted a friend, who I haven't seen in years but still sporadically keep up with, the news. She was married before me and still does not have children, and I know she longs for them. She had to be told, but I could not, and did not, expect her to be happy for me. She had managed to be gracious by Ben's birth, sending a gift and attending the bris, but this time, she did not respond to my text. I understood. 

When I was still single, I attended many vorts and weddings of those younger than me. When I received the news that my cousin's daughter was engaged, I angrily stomped to that vort, slapped a smile on my face by the door, then went in and gushed mazel tov to the giddy 20-year-old. It was bad enough I was being pitied; I didn't want to appear pitiable.

Then, when I got engaged to Han, I felt no need to announce it anywhere. 

It's very hard to be happy for someone else, especially when they acquired their blessings with seemingly little effort. The quote finishes off, "People ruin beautiful things." Others ruin things out of envy, out of sadness. No need to put a stumbling block in their path.

The blessings we have are for us alone. Bracha comes to quiet, private places. In this age of oversharing, perhaps we should become reacquainted with discretion. 

Grief is Allowed

I've been reading It's OK You're Not OK by Megan Devine, and frankly, she sounds pissed. 

She was actually a grief counselor before she lost her husband in a horrific accident, but found herself unequipped for what followed. But she notes that there was the pain from her grief, and then there was the pain that others inflicted on her. 

People are often quite clueless about the ravages of grief. They also exacerbate the pain with cliches and irritation that the griever is so distraught. 

This was highlighted for me recently when I finished was Han refers to as a "lady book," or chick-lit. I shan't name the book, since I'll be spoiling galore, but it follows multiple characters. 

One is a woman in her 50s, whose husband dies of a heart attack in front of her. 

Another is a woman in her 20s, whose fiance calls off their wedding three days before the shebang. 

Obviously, both take to their beds. 

However: 

Approximately six weeks after her husband dies, the widow's friend demands that she has to get out of the house, she has to move on, come to a get-together. The widow begrudgingly agrees, and drags herself outside and has a good time. 

The jilted bride wallows in her misery, to the point where she no longer follows her friend's lives. When she surfaces, she finds herself begging her friend for forgiveness as said friend chastises her for being so "selfish" by falling off the planet. Almost bride is chastened and apologizes. 

Both of these situations annoyed me. 

Grief comes in multiple forms. There's losing family, and there's losing a dream. Even people who develop celiac disease experience the grief of a future life where they can't mindlessly eat in a public setting. 

But grief is not allowed. 

Six weeks is not a long time. That's not even the span of a season. A widow is expected to process and file away the loss of her husband of 30 years in a few days? Heck, my mother's been gone for over six years and I'm not remotely over it! 

As for our almost wife? Um, yeah, she's allowed to move into bed and go dark. No, no one died, but she had her heart ripped out, the future as she saw it dissolved, and she had the humiliation of explaining to her friends and family that the wedding is off. 

Then her friend tells her off? Her friend didn't even go through what she did. So who is she to cast judgement? 

What was even more surprising was that the author's note in the beginning explained that she herself had lost her husband recently. Sooooo . . . she should know what grief is. She should know that grief is allowed, that there is no set time period, and that those in active grief should be cut some slack. 

There are times in life when we have to adjust to a new reality, which will sometimes involve grief. It's allowed.

The Old Heroes

 Another takeaway from Picard 3: 

For those who actually have an interest in watching it, I'll try to keep it vague enough not to cause spoilers. 

The whole intent of this Season was nostalgia. They brought back the original TNG cast, threw in some DS9 villains, and featured a couple of Voyager characters. 

*Sniff* It was perfect. 

Enough time has passed that our TNG peeps are parents, like LaForge and Riker. This brought a new dimension, seeing them as family folk, no longer willing to risk their lives every Tuesday for the heck of it. 

Yet they are also, quite clearly . . . old. The youngest actor is Levar, at 66—everyone else is close to or above 70.

Yet it is because of their age and experience that they end up saving the galaxy. 

There was this tweet a few years back by Kathryn Ivey: 

Why is "the chosen one" always a teenager? We're really gonna put the fate of the universe on someone with an undeveloped prefrontal cortex? Give me a story with a chosen one who is a 42 year old mom that has already seen some s**t and is totally out of f**ks to give

She has a point. The "chosen one" is usually a clueless child that has this insane burden thrust upon him. He doesn't need life experience, because he was selected to be an unwitting tool for forces beyond his ken. With regard to general fictional teenage heroes—adults are the clueless ones who need saving. 

It sort of reinforces the trope that adults "don't get it," and yes, while that may be true for some people who were stupid their whole lives, most adults, due to their age alone, are "it-getters" (credit to Jon Stewart). 

So while it may be that I am watching the last vestiges of my youth trickle through my fingers, it is also with the dawning horror that the kids today will find me irrelevant for my inability to take a decent selfie. 

But there is more to life than technological savvy. 

There was a scene in Picard where Jean-Luc is dining in a bar near the Academy, and he is besieged by starry-eyed cadets begging him for background details of his exploits. Jean-Luc has become an icon, a once hero. But he's not a relic of the past. He's not done yet. It's his experience that keeps him from becoming obsolete.

Ma would get so frustrated when she told us to do something a certain way and we wouldn't listen. She wanted to save us the trouble, that she had learned the right way to go about it, so couldn't we just listen?! She was usually right.

Moshe Rabbeinu is the closest we have to a "chosen one," and he didn't start leading until he was 80. He had life experience first as a prince, shepherd, husband, father. Because we don't believe that being chosen means you magically get there with no effort. The chosen people were chosen to bring our excellence, and we failed to such an extent that we were persecuted and murdered for 3,000 years. 

Moshiach is gonna be old.