March 25, 2024 Edition
Editor: Salma Neghive
Published by JPlease Press
San Miguel De Allende, Mexico
YIDDISH WORD OF THE DAY
“THE UNYEARS”
I wrote the piece below for my old Blog 6-1/2 years ago (interesting that I now notice it was written on X’s Bday), and I recently shared it with a beloved soul in my life, who wanted to have more context for me and my journey. She wrote me back and said that she realizes that she is now in the midst of HER UnYears. For me, it’s an absolutely necessary period to allow ourselves to experience , and a critical undertaking for our personal growth and unfolding. We owe it to ourselves to follow this path as soon as (IF) we come to understand that we have choices about how to deal with the beliefs and narratives we took on, ones that we may have believed to be “facts” or “truths.” It’s imperative for us to see, to believe, that we can truly shift our lens, and our brains, and our thoughts. I believe this – I KNOW this – now more than ever.
THE “UN”YEARS
October 10, 2017
During High Holiday services, Rabbi David Ingber read aloud, Being 10, a reflection on the trials and tribulations and emerging self that emerges over one’s first 10 years of life (Reb D was using it as a metaphor, with this being Romemu’s 10th year in existence). Sitting in the back of the congregation, I had to laugh, as I had recently written an essay, I Am 10, a reflection on the absolute newness of my life. How I feel like a kid in many ways, someone with a new wardrobe, and yet so much deeper.
I call these last years, the ones that are post-marriage and post-lawyering, my UnYears. UnLearning lessons that, like all of us, were taken on by observation, with wrongly held beliefs that somehow become part of us. At least how we see ourselves, and experience ourselves, from the Inside-Out. UnLayering. UnFolding. And yes, Peeling Back My Onion. This Journey to the UnKnown is not one for the weary, because in so many ways, no one knows when it begins, or when it ends. It requires the Journeyer on the Road Less Traveled to have faith, to weather many dark nights of the soul, to walk through the desert with crumbs and little water…to question everything, to sometimes have no clue where you are going with the only piece of clarity being where you don’t want to be. So many questions, and no clarity at all around answers. Especially to the question, “what do you want, (Jonathan)?” It all changed for me when I started to ask myself, “How do you want to feel?” instead of “what do you want?”
And that is when so much shifted. When the light started shining in, when the Universe began to give me what I was asking for – in situations, with people, and within myself. What few people in my life truly understand is that this is the first period in my life when I am actually making important choices, from a new internal paradigm. Without giving my power away to others. Putting people in some kind of elevated place over me, my choices. It’s hard to even articulate or fathom. Wives, Fathers-in-law, dead parents, experts, etc. It’s not that I have not been brave before, or did not make choices that some thought to be crazy, others thought to be brave. It’s simply that the motivation for how I am choosing to live my life now is 179 degrees from where I was years ago. Before the Un. And as a result, my ability to tap into my intuition, to come from a place of faith over fear, abundance over scarcity, passion over conforming, possibilities over “what if’s,” has truly allowed me to give birth to the best version of me that has ever existed. So much (F)Un, still to expose and transform.
And, all I know is that, for me, it’s the only path I can take. #morelove
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