Pain in the Present: Living History In Israel

The sun was shining in Tel Aviv, and the hard granite of the Trumpeldor cemetery was pressing into my bottom, but at that moment, every joint in my body ached, and my spine felt like someone was scalding it with a hot poker. We sat there, by the tomb of Arik Einstein, one of the most influential Israeli musicians in history, listening to one of his most famous songs, Uf Gozal, and I found myself crying behind my dark sunglasses. Here was a conflict between the past and the present.

The unfortunate truth about pain is that it requires in itself, a presence. When something hurts, it's like a notification on your phone that won't go away no matter how many times you press the clear button. You try to breathe through it, but it doesn't do anything. The worst part of pain like this is that you wonder whether you'll ever feel better again, but that's talking about the future, and I'll get there in a second.

Uf Gozal, which is about a bird leaving the nest, a metaphor for Israeli teenagers leaving home to serve in the army, is a song of the past and a song from my past. When I was in high school, I listened to this song over and over again. It wasn't because I resonated with the words; I don't think I knew what they meant. I resonated with the emotion contained within them. There's so much more to be said about the power of music and memory, but that's a different story. In that moment, feelings from the past and present overwhelmed me in that moment.

Half of me wanted so badly to focus on the melody of the song and the words of our tour guide, but every few seconds, the pain would reassert itself, essentially saying, "pay attention to me. I don't care abut what you're supposed to be thinking about; I am your present."

Israel is a place of living history. It's a place that combines past, present, and future, and so did that moment. Israel is a place where you can stroll down the streets of Jerusalem wearing Beats headphones. The present in that moment in the cemetery was a profoundly isolating experience, and the future was terrifying, but the past, at least in that moment, was comforting. The past can teach us something even with pain in the present, and even looking in retrospect. And I'm excited to keep on learning from it because I know that there is a future for me even when I don't feel like it.