From Darkness to Light

During lunch at work the other day, I was in my office, scrolling on the internet in horror, watching as the world unleashed it’s unbridled, unfiltered, antisemitism.

At the same time, I heard laughter coming from the senior lounge where my colleagues were eating their lunch. It sounded so strange at first. It occurred to me how laughter has become what feels likes, a long-gone thing of the past since Oct. 7th. Since that day, I just figured I don’t know if I will ever truly laugh again, and the sound of it seemed so out of place in the midst of what seems like living in a constant state of sitting shiva since that barbaric October day.

Still, I was drawn to the seeming lightness of hearing laughter, and figured, even though I had already eaten, I’d go join the group.

I realized immediately the laughter was like a release valve from the intensity of life as we now know it. Once I sat down, I realized why there was so much laughter. It was because the conversation was so crazy nuts. It appeared the group was passionately ensconced in a debate about aliens. Apparently, some people at work have had encounters with aliens and were making the case for them to exist amongst us earthlings. I have to say, if aliens do exist here on earth, I hope they can do something to help save humanity. I would actually welcome a mothership to take me to another planet right about now.

I decided to jump into the crazy conversation and interjected the thought that I’m thinking of going off the grid because quite honestly I don’t think I can take much more of the madness of the world. Someone chimed in they had a farmhouse somewhere in the likes of Idaho or some state I have no idea where it is located on the map, that I could go to. To which I replied, I was thinking more like an apartment in a high rise in Manhattan. You know, where you never have to leave and could just order everything up. That’s more along my idea of going off the grid. Disappearing literally right in the middle of one.

Then somehow the conversation jumped to a whole other off the wall place where everyone at the table was agreeing I should be the next Golden Bachelorette. At this point I recognized that we as a group sitting around the table apparently needed some kind of make-believe conversation break other than what is really going on in the world around us. And so, we continued on with this ridiculous conversation of me being the next Golden Bachelorette, I have to say, I would agree to it. Who doesn’t want love? Isn’t that what the world needs now? Yes, it is. And yes, so do I.

The whole crazy lunch conversation was a momentary reprieve from the awful and endless despair I have been feeling day after day. I feel like I’ve been thrown into the Matrix and I want to wake up. I want Oct. 7th to have never happened.

However, all I can think about every day, through-out the day, is my wish for all the hostages to be released and reunited with their loved ones again. And pray that by the time this goes to print, that is what has already happened.

I pray for peace in Israel. No more wars. My silent prayer, please never, ever, ever, ever again. What century is this?!!!

If miracles do exist, as they have in Chanukah past, may the light overcome the darkness.

That antisemitism one day no longer exist in human’s hearts and minds.

That true laughter come from the joy of humanity finding its’ way back out of the darkness.

If in fact there is any reality show I’ll sign up for, it’s that one.