A Time to Be Furiously Happy
I once - and only once - went on a five-day silent meditation retreat. As I'm sure you can imagine, I wasn't very good at it. But the strangest memory I have of that retreat was leaving - leaving was unexpectedly overwhelming. There was noise everywhere. People were chattering aimlessly, just pouring out words without any sense of filter or care. And people were just going about everyday life, as if everyday life was not completely absurd. That first day of being back in life is similar to how I often feel in the first days of Sukkot, and it is especially true of this year, in which things have been just so serious for so long. Sukkot begins just a scant few days after the closing of Yom Kippur, and they are in some ways polar opposites as holy days. Yom Kippur demands that we confront some of the most difficult aspects of life, such as mortality and the inevitability of failure - things that we have been confronting this year in a completely different way. And then Sukkot com