Letter From Israel

  elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

Worrying

 

A comment recently made about people in the West not having to worry about losing their butchers in suicide bus explosions made me contemplate worrying.  It is personal, local, regional and national.  It is, in fact, universal.

 

A plane overhead this morning, quietly making its way across a brilliantly blue sky, covers the width of Israel in about 10 seconds.  Unless we’re at war, the skies over our small town are never disturbed by airplane noises.

 

So why does a plane cross our quiet sky this morning?  Has Assad decided (in his palpable wisdom) that he’s the one who will finally bring us to destruction?  Did Hezbollah at last accumulate the arsenal that Iran is trying to trans-ship across Syria?  Too bad someone keeps interrupting that flow.

 

Will the border hold between Syria and the Golan Heights?  Can the IDF stop an incursion there, or one of innumerable Syrian refugees from Jordan? Oh dear.

Both my daughters drive SUVs.  Both have been involved in accidents where their cars were the definite winners.  They assure me that they are as safe as safe can be.  I have had two serious car accidents.  Do their reassurances help assuage my unease?  Not a bit (tfu, tfu, tfu).  And let’s not even talk about lead-footed grandsons learning how to drive on our inconsiderate roads.  I really don’t want to think about that.

 

I developed a theory a long time ago that we all have a worry space, something like a stomach which, when empty, insists on being refilled.  I have no idea where it is.  I have never investigated this theory—as is, it satisfies my personal disquiet—but I have a feeling it’s pretty much common.  Health concerns feature prominently with haunting apprehension for the humans in your life.  As soon as the tax bill is satisfied, worry shifts to the condition of the plumbing, until that’s fixed and then: The car.  The job.  The dog.  You know what worries you.

 

Could they be training flights?

 

So those are the contents of my worry space.  I’m happy to report that there is constant motion within the space; when one worry ceases or is solved, another takes its place.  No need to feel overwhelmed; your worries are safe.

 

cross posted  Israel Thrives