Expectations Story

Commuting from New Jersey to New York, I’ve learned to stick to myself—to sit or stand in a tight space, with many other people around, and pretend they are not there. Sometimes I am content with this sense of individualism and independence, and other times I crave to engage.

I stumbled upon an invitation for interaction in the 42nd Street subway station. I noticed a man giving away free balloon animals, a colorful tiled mural, and then a table set up with posters reading “Free Henna”, “Free Quran”, and “Muslims Giving Back”. My eyes scanned a large banner with the word “Racism” crossed out.

Three Muslim women, wearing hijabs and full veils, were at the henna and Qaran table, dispelling negative stereotypes through simple, human interactions. I waited in the short line and then spent the next twenty-five minutes chatting with strangers, unexpectedly connecting with people from a different culture from my own.

I found myself wondering why avoiding connection is so easy to do in such a diverse, full city. In an effort to change this pattern, I placed my hand on the older woman’s knee as she drew a beautiful, brown design gently across my skin. It spanned from my left wrist to my fingernails—a flower, paisley, and little dots and lines.

How can you connect more with individuals and communities different from your own?

Beginnings Story

The plan was to be down on one knee. She and I were at the exact spot in the park where we'd met three years before. My brother was hiding in the bushes with a telephoto lens. I’d spent months searching for the right ring. A diamond, but not a bloody one. She wanted this engagement and wasn’t shy about saying so. I was less sure. Not because I didn’t love her or want to spend our lives together. But because of the overwhelming uncertainty. The divorce rate isn't actually 50 percent, it's more like 30, but that’s still a whole lot of visits to Splitsville. And there is no reason to think we wouldn’t one day book tickets there ourselves. Yet the part of me that doesn’t care about logic knew it was time, uncertainty be damned. Because really, in this life, there is nothing to do but try. I dropped down, lifted the ring, and asked my baby to become my bride. She said yes. The rest is a blur. Luckily my brother did his job. But in the photos I’m not down on one knee. I’m down on both knees. Grounded, in the face of uncertainty.
 

When you’re starting something new, how do you balance excitement and uncertainty?

The New Year Story

Everybody put your best suit or dress on

Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

As thirty dialogues bleed into one.
 

I wish the world was flat like the old days

Then I could travel just by folding a map

No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

There'd be no distance that can hold us back.

What do you want to discover in 2017?
 

Happy New Year!

Light Story

As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
 

What’s one thing you can do to help someone in need this holiday season?

Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light, begins at sunset this Saturday and lasts for eight nights.

Strength Story

I took a breath.
Realized I wasn’t twelve.
Realized I wasn’t ruled by those demons from my past.
Realized I was a grown-up.
Realized it didn’t matter if they knew I was different.
Hell, I was different.
I took off my hat.
My hair spilled down onto my shoulders like Samson.
I got my strength back.
I knocked down the walls of my past with my bare hands.
I became a man.

How can you boost your inner strength?

Here-and-Now Story

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
 

What is one thing you can do this week to live a more engaged life?

Facing Fears Story

There are only three things in this world that I’m truly afraid of: sharks, dolls that come to life in the middle of the night, and dying alone.

The first two I blame on a childhood spent consuming American media. I was four when Jaws came out. For some incomprehensible reason, my parents had a copy of the “literary adaptation” with a cover that matched the movie poster. I would sneak up to their bookshelf and peek at the image, then run to my room to hide from it.

Then there was Poltergeist. This movie ruined clown dolls for me forever (Not that they’d ever held much appeal in the first place. But still.).

My third fear came to life much later. And it crashes over me like a rogue wave every time I visit my grandmother in her nursing home. She’s one of the lucky ones in the facility; my mother lives close and visits her regularly. But my grandmother’s neighbors? I often see them alone in their separate rooms, nodding in and out of consciousness, TVs blaring, with photos of family members taped to their doors. I try to make eye contact with each person I pass, say hello, and smile. Is that all there is?

This thought terrifies me more than all the sharks in the ocean and all the evil dolls in my closet.

How can you confront what you fear?

Memory Story

I own just one relic left behind by my Grandpa Wini: the “life story” I made him recite into their Flat-Mic cassette recorder.

I had that tape for ten years. I could never bring myself to listen it.

Until now.

“On my first day of kindergarten,” he began, “I was sent home with a piece of tape across my mouth and a note pinned to my sweater that said, ‘Send him back when he can speak English’ because all I could speak was…Yiddish.”

What I didn’t know was how much I almost never knew. That little piece of tape sealed his true story. Just forty-two words, yet enough to unlock an entirely new understanding of someone I thought I knew.

What’s something you learned from asking your elders?

Hope Story

Last year, I began volunteering at the dog rescue shelter near my home. The backstories of the dogs read like a Debbie Downer routine—elderly, blind, diabetic, etc. But I felt sustained by the very existence of this place—the relentless optimism and abiding hope that I saw in the people who keep it going.

A few months in, I fell for a sassy 12-year-old pug named Midge (picture the personality of Susie Essman, curly-haired opinionated voice of reason on Curb Your Enthusiasm, with the stage presence of Tina Turner), and decided to adopt her. Sharing this news, I was met with a variety of incredulous reactions, from my wife’s genuine concern for my well-being, to a stranger at a holiday party who gasped, “But she’s just going to die!”

Mostly, people asked why? Why would you knowingly enter into an emotional attachment that’s likely to end in sadness so soon? It’s a divisive question, one that forces us to consider the value of love and hope. To me, it’s worth it. As renowned pug enthusiast W.B. Yeats said, “Man is in love, and loves what vanishes; what more is there to say?”
 

When has hope paid off for you?

The Future Story

Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.

What does living well look like to you?