Between Two Darknesses
On Forster’s five facts and what we have entrusted to others
In 1927, lecturing at Cambridge on the art of the novel, E. M. Forster pauses and invites his listeners to set the novel aside and look at their own lives. The main facts in human life are five, he says. Birth, food, sleep, love and death. He admits he could add breathing, and still he leaves the list at five.
That sentence gradually took on a life of its own, beyond the literature lecture in which it first appeared. Perhaps because of its simplicity. Five doors that favor no one. The king is born, the laborer grows hungry, and both the professor and the shepherd close their eyes at night.
Another line from that same lecture stayed with me even longer. We do not remember our birth, and we do not know our death. We know both only from what others tell us. In Forster’s words, we move between two darknesses.
Two thresholds no one asked us about
In Pirkei Avot there is a stern saying of Rabbi Elazar HaKappar. Against your will you were formed, against your will you were born, against your will you live, against your will you will die, and against your will you will give an account before the King of kings.
In my life these two thresholds fell very close to each other. My son was born, and he was only four and a half months old when my father died. In my arms was a life that had just arrived, beside me the emptiness of the one who had gone. No one asked me about either. No one had taught me how to hold one while letting go of the other.
At first, Rabbi Elazar’s words make the chest tighten. Stay with them a little longer and something else appears. The two thresholds were set without asking us, and the path between them was left to us. That path is what we will be asked about. We do not choose the doors, we choose how we live in the room.
There was a time when people were born at home and died at home. The midwife was called, the neighbors gathered, and while the dead were washed, children watched through the gap in the door. Death was frightening perhaps, yet it was not a stranger. Now both have moved to white corridors. Children grow up without ever seeing a funeral, adults leave old age behind the walls of care homes. As if two darknesses were not enough, we made them invisible too. We fear most what we hide.
Food, between the forgotten and the known
Forster ties food to a beginning we cannot remember. We are fed before we are born, in our mother’s womb, and it continues without pause until this morning’s breakfast. A bridge between the known and the forgotten.
The teachings of the Ari give this bridge an entirely different depth. In the breaking of the vessels, holy sparks were scattered into every corner of the world, even into the bread we eat and the water we drink. When a person eats with a beracha and mindful intention, that spark is elevated. Food does not only nourish the body, it returns a piece of the world to its source. Read in this light, the Torah’s words that man does not live by bread alone whisper that what gives life is the word hidden inside the bread, the divine speech.
And yet today we eat standing up. A phone in one hand, a fork in the other. No table is set, no one is waited for. We eat from packages left at the door. In these lands, to eat bread at the same table was once a covenant, the very name of the bond between people. Sharing a mouthful with someone was the oldest way of seeing them.
Sleep, one sixtieth of death
In the Talmud, in Berakhot, there is a curious list. Fire is one sixtieth of Gehinnom, honey one sixtieth of manna, Shabbat one sixtieth of the world to come, a dream one sixtieth of prophecy. And sleep is one sixtieth of death.
So every night we lie down to a small rehearsal. We close our eyes, let go of control, and for a while forget who we are.
Sleep has never been an easy guest for me. There have been many nights when I lay down and waited for it, and it did not come. Reading that line in Berakhot, I began to see sleeplessness differently. Perhaps not being able to sleep is partly not being able to let go. To close your eyes, to surrender yourself for a while, to enter the night without any guarantee of morning. No one falls asleep with a clenched fist. Sleep is a matter of trust, and on some nights trust is hard won.
Perhaps this is why, the moment I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing I do is say good morning to HaShem. Modeh Ani. I thank You, living and eternal King, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is Your faithfulness. After a difficult night this prayer is said differently. Every morning, a small birth.
Love, running through the other four
Forster says novels give love more space than it deserves. In real life love takes up fewer hours than we imagine. By the clock he may well be right.
Still, love does not seem to be the same kind of fact as the other four. It runs through them and gives them their color. When I nursed my son, I forgot everything. The tiredness, the hour, the world. In that moment a baby was simply being fed. It was food, and it was love. Covering someone who has fallen asleep is a tenderness that touches sleep. Holding someone’s hand at their last breath is love standing at the very edge of death. When love withdraws, biology is what remains. When love enters, biology becomes life.
Of the five, love is the one most in our own hands. We do not choose birth or death, and hunger and sleep are needs we can only obey. The door of love opens from within. Perhaps that is why we fear losing it most, and why we hand it over most readily to bargains, to algorithms, to faces swiped away. We want to be loved without being seen, and yet to be loved without being seen is impossible.
The Song of Songs binds the five together in its own way. Love is as strong as death. It places the last two facts on the list side by side and holds them in balance. One closes the door, the other goes on living even behind closed doors.
The house of five doors
One by one we carried these five facts out of the house. We handed birth over to hospitals, death to institutional corridors, food to delivery packages, sleep to apps, and love to screens. Life became easier perhaps, and a little emptier.
Forster’s list stands like a reminder. The heart of being human lies not in great achievements but in these plain doors we pass through every day. What did you eat today, and with whom, how did you sleep, whom did you touch, whom did you see. Small questions, all of them. Put side by side, they are a life itself.
We move between two darknesses, yes. And the path between them is as wide as a day given back to us, each morning, with compassion.
Sources
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, 1927, chapter “People”
Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4:22, Rabbi Elazar HaKappar
Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 57b
The Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria), Likutei Torah, Parashat Ekev
The Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria), Etz Chaim, Gates 8 and 9, on the breaking of the vessels
