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This post is really not a literary discussion.  I hope you will bear with its short introduction.

In one of my classes we are reading and discussing Jonathan Safron Foer’s first book, Everything is Illuminated.  (It’s a brilliant, hilarious book,  youthfully and exuberantly crammed full of story-telling devices.)  In general, it is the story of two young men trying to seek their ancestry in the distant aftermath of the Holocaust. Foer uses differing and evolving “voices” to tell a complicated and heart-wrenching story of every little moment (both profound and utterly undignified) that add up to the lineage of one's family.  The book is packed with philosophical questions about the human condition. My seminar students have been chewing on these themes (some of which are very difficult questions for young people with limited years on the planet and a limited understanding of the Human Condition).

We keep coming back to this one:

Do we love someone by acting as if we love them whether or not we "feel" love?  Does that person “feel loved” because of our actions?  What consequence do the choices of these actions have on our lives, our fellow humans, even our continuance as human beings in the long history of humankind?

It is a BIG QUESTION.

And what the book seems to be saying is that our actions do matter.  Like the so-called “Butterfly effect,” a small decision in the minutia of human actions reverberates from the ripples of our ancestors, and continues to reverberate through the people whose lives we touch, on and on, as we struggle through our little one life out of five billion on this planet, breathing each breath, speaking each thought, struggling through each moment of pain, illness, ecstasy, brilliance, mendacity, and yes, stupidity.

We are welcome to the human condition.

Every breath is a choice to move forward and keep trying.  Every step is a choice to engage with whatever shit or surprise or hilarity or exquisite beauty that is thrown at us each and every day.  Every action is a choice whether or not to embrace our humanity, humility, and kindness.  We have good days and bad days.  Some days we hide.  Some days we rail against injustice (even if only imagined).  Some days we give in with despair.  And some days we glow with utter brilliance and light.

My prayer for all of us: 

as we breathe and choose and rage and bubble with laughter and chide our unkind thoughts and sing our own songs and make mistakes and regret the past and feel shame over our imperfections and are overwhelmed by the complexity of it all and feel envious of others and feel fortunate for what we have and fall to our knees in gratitude for the small/grand gifts of life and breath and sunshine and a new day to start anew

May we glow with brilliance and light.

May our computers glow with the gifts that only we can share.

May we be mindful that there is a living, breathing, sentient, very human person behind each and every blog on OS.   And  may we all as one, maybe so it can be heard even by the astronauts and cosmonauts orbiting our earth at this very second:

clap our hands in gratitude.

Peace.

_{text copyright 2009 voicegal}