Serendiptitously I came across this book at a key juncture of my fast approaching mid-life; a time when I felt that I had finally righted the wrongs of my past, made ammends with my soul for opportunities lost, and a new script was about to take on flesh. In short, I was sure that I had successfully authored my own comeback, resurrection, starting-over-point.
However events would soon interfere and these best crafted, thought out plans were not to be so, nor, does it seem, will they ever be. I found myself instant robbed of meaning at age 46--in short, on the world's stage with no script and, hence, no part.
Rabbi Kushner's work is a deeply moving and profound look at the ultimate "what if..." question that haunts humankind; "What if things don't turn out for good?" His book is spiritual without being mystical; practical without being profane; humane without being overly humanist.
After reading and praying over this book, I've come to the realization that life is precious; that it is something more than to be mastered or even tolerated. Life itself is a sacred mystery, and whether we win or suffer defeat, gain or lose, achieve or fail, truly, that which does not destroy us makes us stronger. This, according to the good and blessed Rabbi, is our goal.
Who among us hasn't had a disappointment or two? Or three or four... OK, I'll stop counting. In this book Rabbi Harold S. turns his attention to how we can use disappointments to help us be better people. Using the story of Moses to illustrate his points, Rabbi Kushner explores all aspects of disappointment. When we aspire to achieve something, and fall short, we need to understand why we wanted it in the first place. Was it our authentic dream, or the dream our father had for us? Was the ideal really in our best interest? Did we work for it, or subversively against
it? Did we fully commit and keep our promises? Can we let go of dreams, yet keep their memory with us, knowing something better is yet to come?
Here's an excerpt:"What can we do with the dreams we have learned we must shed? Can we simply discard them as the embarrassing fantasies of immature youth? I don't see how we can or why we should. They were too much a part of us for too many years for us to pretend we never dreamed those dreams. When life gives us the inevitable message that our marriage will not be the 'happily ever after' we hoped it would, that our children will be other than who we dreamed they would be, that our careers will grind to a halt somewhere short of our imagined goal, and that the only road to sanity and happiness involves freeing ourselves from the tyranny of those dreams and the feelings of failure that accompany their nonfulfillment, what do we do then? We do what Moses did when he realized that his dream of teaching people to walk in Gods' ways would not be realized as easily as he had hoped, when the shattered fragments of the commandments written by the hand of God lay in pieces at his feet. He lovingly gathered up the pieces and carried them with him in the same Ark in which the whole stones of the replacement tablets rested..."Broken dreams, broken hearts, hopes unrealized should not be seen as emblems of shame, badges of failure. If anything, they are tokens of courage. We were brave enough to dream, brave enough to long
for so much, and when we did not get it, we were brave enough to carry the fragments of those dashed hopes with us into the future, telling us who we used to be as a prelude to our discovering who we might become."
