A Tough Friday And How I Found Beauty to Help

I can't put my finger on the exact cause, the final straw, but I've had a tough Friday. I miss my father (zt"l), there's no two ways about it. But that's not new. It's been 9+ months since he passed away. I'm definitely more emotional in general since then, more likely to "need a moment" when something comes up. In addition, the mother (zt"l) of a dear friend, perhaps my closest, passed away recently. That's also upped the ante a bit, I suppose. As my friend has inched out of her emotional cocoon, we've spent more time together, which is a blessing for both of us. But I ache for her, for her mother, and for the world for losing a truly wonderful person. And in turn, that has made me even more sensitive. The world has felt uglier to me, someone who usually can see beauty in some pretty ugly things.

As I walked to work this morning, surrounded by the visual cacophony of Koreatown, with its bazaar of bizarre West African-owned wholesale shops, selling $2 skirts and alien (to me) hair care products, I wanted to scream out, to tell these clueless people how these two great lights of human potential had been snuffed out too soon. I yearned to shake them from their mundane existence. The intense emotional back-and-forth between sadness and anger was exhausting me, and I still had more than 10 blocks to go. My train had been delayed (again!) and I had had too much time alone on the way in--maybe that was a big part of it.

But as I reached a street in the mid 20s, tears still streaming, I caught a glimpse of a store selling hideous baseball hats. I laughed, at first derisively, but then I paused and chuckled as I thought that probably, it was actually the cacophony, emotionally jarring and cognitively dissonant, that was a source of beauty. It occurred to me that perhaps it was precisely the kaleidoscopic nature of our world, simultaneously messy and clean, happy and sad, loud and quiet, particularly noticeable in New York, a city beloved by both people I was mourning, which was thrilling and terrifying all at once and was in fact, the very definition of beauty.

I don't mean to take anything from the great John Keats when I say that I felt a great truth emerge as I continued to stroll south on 5th avenue, a little less weight on my shoulders and with a bit of a bounce in my step.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

I'm still having a tough Friday but being reminded of the beauty in everyday life, which has helped me focus on the truth and the beauty of my father's life--and that of my dear friend's mother--has helped.

Good shabbos.