There is nothing simple about a simple day

Two and a half years ago, I went to Nir Oz and wrote about not looking away.

I walked through the kibbutz, past homes that had been left exactly as they were on October 7. I remember the surrealness of it: the beauty of the kibbutz alongside the devastation, the quiet alongside the terrible stories, the bright, colorful toys strewn across the burned grounds, the ordinary details of people’s lives frozen in the middle of something unimaginable.

I wrote then that some things are simply too painful to look at, but that looking away is not an option.

I never could have imagined that I would return two and a half years later for a concert.

I never could have imagined the crowd that would gather there. Religious and secular. Young and old. People from all over the country. People who have lived through this war in very different ways, standing together in a place that still carries the physical scars of October 7.

And I never could have imagined that the person performing would be Sagui Dekel-Chen.

Sagui wrote nine songs while he was in captivity. He composed them, held on to them in his memory, and, immediately after his release, while still in the hospital, sang them into his phone so they would not be lost.

Tonight, for the first time, he performed them publicly.

At one point, he sang “Pashut Yom Pashut” – “Just a Simple Day.”

He explained that the song was about the ordinary days he dreamed about in captivity. The days we barely notice when we are living them. He would dream about them, then wake up and remember where he was: alone, sad, deep in Gaza.

He told us to appreciate the simple days, because those are what you miss most.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that.

There is something very Israeli about loving a simple day.

We are a country that lives with extraordinary intensity. There is always something happening. Something to worry about. A siren. A funeral. A reserve call-up. A hostage deal. A political crisis.

Nothing here is ever entirely simple. And perhaps that is exactly why Israelis are so good at savoring the simple things.

A coffee date that lasts two hours. Sitting at the beach until the sun goes down. Going for a run because you need to clear your head. Sitting around a table for hours. Arguing about something completely insignificant. Going for a dip in a spring. Laughing. Being together.

These things can look almost frivolous from the outside. But I don’t think they are.

I think they are part of how we navigate the intensity.

When you have spent nearly the last three years living with the knowledge that life can change in a moment, an ordinary afternoon doesn’t feel quite as ordinary.

When you have stood in a kibbutz that was burned on October 7 and then watched thousands of people gather there for a concert, you understand something about the preciousness of being able to gather.

When you have watched a returned hostage sing songs he wrote in captivity about the life he longed to return to, you hear “a simple day” differently.

And when you send your son off to a combat unit in the army, knowing that he may be asked to do extraordinarily difficult things, you suddenly notice the ordinary things you have spent years taking for granted.

The conversations in the car. The teenager wandering into the kitchen. The whole family sitting around the table. The spontaneous dance parties in the living room. The fact that everyone is simply home.

On Sunday, we brought our son to the army’s induction base. All around us were parents blessing their children, giving hugs, wiping away tears of pride, fear, worry, and love. High emotions and intense heat made for a particularly draining experience.

And then he was off, and we spent the rest of the day with our cousins, enjoying all the simple, ordinary pleasures of life.

Ice cream from the makolet. Swings in the park. Hide-and-seek. Chatting on benches in the shade. Pizza for lunch. Hours of playing with and reading books to little kids.

My children remarked that it felt like an “American Sunday,” the kind we used to have before we made aliyah. The kind we sometimes even complained were boring.

It was a “Pashut Yom Pashut.” Just a simple day.

Except that it wasn’t.

It had started by watching hundreds of parents proudly send their children to defend our country at a time when we know their service is not likely to be simple at all.

But strangely, that is one of the gifts of living here.

There is nothing particularly impressive about ordinary life in Israel. But when you know how easily it can be taken away – because you have experienced it firsthand – the ordinary suddenly becomes extraordinary.

Standing in Nir Oz last night, I kept looking around and thinking about how impossible it would have been to imagine this night when I was there two and a half years ago.

The same place, with so much that is still burned and broken.

And yet here we were.

A returned hostage singing songs he wrote underground. Thousands of people listening. Religious and secular standing shoulder to shoulder. People laughing, crying, singing.

People choosing, somehow, to come back to this place and make noise and music and life.

It wasn’t a denial of what happened there.

It was the opposite.

It was what happens when you refuse to let the intensity of what happened be the only story.

Over and over again, the people of this country make the choice to embrace the simple things in life. To insist that there is more to our days than war and fear and politics.

There are still concerts, coffee dates and beaches. Runs and dinners. Shabbat tables and children who need rides. Errands that need to be done.

Sagui sang about dreaming of a simple day.

We don’t have to wait for life to become simple in order to appreciate simplicity.

Maybe the intensity of life is exactly what teaches us to savor it. To lean into the small moments. To appreciate the ordinary days.

The kind of day we might once have called boring.

The kind of day a hostage dreamed about.

The kind of day a mother sending her son into the army prays he will have many, many more of.

“Pashut Yom Pashut”—just a simple day.

Perhaps there is nothing simple about it at all.