Water Wings

I was watching a little boy in a swimming pool the other day.

He was floating with inflated plastic around his arms and an inflated ring around his waist. His mother was standing next to him.

The child was “safe.” But he couldn’t swim. His body was doing nothing. He could barely move with all the inflated plastic surrounding his limbs. He was basically isolated from the water. How was he to feel the water with his body?

In order to swim, one must be immersed in the water, and feel it without effort. It isn’t enough to sit in it, floating with the help of an apparatus.

We don’t use crutches when we learn to walk and we shouldn’t use floats to learn how to swim. Sometimes children flap around, sputter and struggle, but eventually they swim. They learn. Immersed in the water. They manage and they succeed.

It’s really no different than life. Life anywhere. Today, so many surround themselves with protection and convenience. People have forgotten how to experience real life. How to struggle. And manage. And grow.

People order online instead of going to a store. They avoid human contact, interact with the digital shopping cart instead of sales people. When it comes time to make a phone call, I’ve seen grown adults freeze. They’ve forgotten how to start a conversation, how to approach a stranger.

Perhaps some of them never knew how…

One of the things I love about life in Israel is the connection. It is hard to live isolated and completely alone. In Israel, we need each other and we are very much connected. For better or for worse!

We are a tiny country, and a small people. Every person matters.

Neighbors you yelled at yesterday knock on your door to borrow sugar today. We don’t have the luxury of holding a grudge. Neighbors see each other in the store, in the mailroom, at shul. We give strangers rides, and always seem to know them when looking a little closer in the confines of the car.

Our neighbors help when you have a flat tire, and it doesn’t matter if he was your son’s 6th grade teacher who gave him a hard time.

Men of the community are needed to make a minyan at a shiva, or to patrol after a terror attack. The daily scuffles and arguments get swept under the rug and out to pasture…there just isn’t time for it. Life is messy. Some call it “sticky,” our society. Everyone agrees that it’s loud. It is somewhat inconvenient. And it is also incredibly alive.

It seems to be ok this way. We are still here, after all.

We don’t protect ourselves from life.

Maybe more people should do the same, and feel the water.