Heartbeats

I hear the music and dancing in the streets as midnight approaches.  A joyous and festive air permeates the neighborhood.  We are on a high right now for a religious celebration, but we've also been on a low with the recent terror attacks.  Two parents murdered in front of their four children.  Another child, a toddler, witness to his father's murder and his mother's serious wounding.  Many other attacks, some big, some small, some already "run-of-the-mill" for us.

How do we deal with these ups and downs, these highs and lows that dictate our lives here in Israel?  We even have this set into our national calendar - Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror, the day before Independence Day.  We go from deep, deep mourning straight into ecstatic celebration.

A wise woman once said to me that nothing is a flat line.  Emotions in the normal course of life go up and down, desires go up and down, moods go up and down.  If you have something remaining the same then you have flatlined, and we all know what a flat line on a heart monitor means!

The heartbeat of our nation is such that we can be taken from the depths of despair to the peaks of happiness in a matter of hours, and we can go from the best day of the year to a national tragedy at a moment's notice.  It is this heartbeat that binds us together and keeps us alive.  It is the ebb and flow of our daily lives.

The heartbeat can be difficult to navigate and everyone shows the emotional wear and tear of it.  But I dread to think what life would look like without it.