“If my grandmother would have had wheels, she would have been a bus!”

If I want to know how Israel’s problems can be fixed, all I have to do is read tens of different blogs from all different perspectives to know THE answer. If the government did this, if Netanyahu did that…“If my grandmother would have had wheels, she would have been a bus!” This is the cry of helplessness. We like to use the government and its leadership to distract ourselves from the reality of the challenges we face as a nation and as a people.

We need to blame; the lack of future candidates, the ineffectual voting system, weak leadership, divisiveness, and so on and so on. The fact remains that we are a group of people, a community, a nation that is trying (and at times not as successfully as we would like) to continue to exist under very complicated and life threatening circumstances.

As a mental health practitioner, I can’t help but see the parallel between our approach to the political body and the physical body. In health care, too, there are just as many blogs dedicated to THE way to fix a health problem. The reason we are still suffering and struggling is because there is no quick fix. There has been much advancement made that has helped save lives and improve quality of life, but we continue to struggle.

There are other parallels between the political body and the physical body; both are made up of systems, all systems influence and impact on the others, the problems have to be seen from both a current and historical perspective, and how the intervention translates from a theoretical or lab perspective to reality is not often predictable.

The worst message that can be communicated during a life threatening situation is that if someone doesn’t begin to do the one strategy that is clearly THE answer; the outcome will be death or destruction.

Finally it boils down to responsibility; individually and collectively. Because we live in a democracy, that our children are giving up their lives for us to have, we need to be responsible with our words and thoughts. It is crucial for us to voice our concerns and insights. But it is our responsibility to do so in a way that will strengthen, not weaken our resolve.