Lag Baomer
Its hard to describe what the holiday of Lag Baomer is
Simcha, translated — as most words — vaguely, as ‘happiness’, is unique in her dynamics.
I spoke with someone the other day about information and the mediums through with it may be stored and/or transferred. Information in its primary form, presumably, lives in one’s brain. On any ‘medium’ — the written word, for example, the ‘information’ is stagnant, sedentary. Information, intellect, lives only within a brain. Yet, that is too a medium.
Real information is agnostic to any medium, and is entirely independent of any world or structure or framework. Information — we’ll use here the word ‘facts’, only to illustrate a point, and aware of the hijacking of the term facts — is fundamentally true; is an existence which is real regardless of an observer.
Hence the observer — the knower — is, too, in some respect, but a medium.
[The story goes further, where, in the (unique?) case of information the observer can influence and can contribute to the information; but that’s not the discussion here.]
So the outcome was the illustration that — with any concept — there is the awareness of an entity, and there is familiarity and the appreciation of her reality. In the jargon — ידיעת המציאות and השגת המהות. There’s a story in the Talmud of one who saw his someone only from behind; would he have seen him from the front however…
That all serves as an introduction.
There was a discussion over Passover about certain behaviors — maybe most behaviors — which are best left to be performed naturally. As in, one can, and many do, spend much time editing their ways of life, even their ways of thinking. I’m not sure if the movement of ‘working on oneself’ is new; it certainly is perverted.
There are a few premises which must be acknowledged and accepted prior to inviting any stress:
- Justification: that the reward outweighs the investment; that the risks are suitable. There are always going to be liabilities attached to voluntary stressors: is this worth it? Why am I doing this? What’s the opportunity cost? What will happen if I don’t go down this path? And especially thinking long-term, and in the bigger picture, the sum of the effects, etc.
- Appropriateness: There are many options when it comes to self-improvement. Just because when I woke up this morning and skimmed through the available ways to complicate my life, does not mean that going off carbs is going to be the right choice right now.
- Responsibility: Do I have someone ready to spot me on this journey? A friend, mentor. Approval?
- Motives: Let’s not get into this… It would never start from the beginning.
- Plan: This is the most important. At what point will I graduate. At what point will this new trained behavior become natural.
This too is an introduction; this too is a separate discussion. One always has to grow, yet arbitrarily spinning one’s wheels does not always constitute growth. While we encourage all positive and all active behaviors, floating and meandering may not be right for everyone, always.
The goal, consistently, needs to be coordinated with the baseline. Does one have a baseline? Does one recognize their own baseline? If one is permanently operating in areas well out of their comfort zone — does that even constitute growth (is it improving a (possibly non-existent) baseline)? Is there a value in the product, disregarding the participant (in other words: do we really need your actions in their own right, if its discounting, ignoring, at the expense of, and (therefore) sacrificing your ‘self’)? And at that — from both a societal perspective (what is one’s net contribution), as well as from a theoretical perspective (can we posit that one’s ‘purpose’ or ‘mission’ is to ignore themself — that they’re needed so urgently that we indeed want them to put themself aside and perform)? Is your selfless disregard for yourself sometimes very selfish? Is your ignorant activity — your hard work — maybe lazy?
There are some activities which are offensive when performed from rote or from affectation. Like, for example, intimacy. Or, along those lines, to varying extents, all behaviors within (and which in turn constitute) a relationship. And, the term relationship doesn’t need to be applied strictly to deep or ‘real’ etc. relationships: let’s liberally extend that term to all interaction: that according to the extent and gravity (for lack of a better word right now) of the relationship, there’s a commensurate disgust for falsity or casualness.
Now, focusing on the actions (rather than the context (the relationship)) — there will be varying degrees of ‘truth’ latent within those actions.
To preface: superficiality is not, as the world recently has embraced an ideology, to be shunned. Superficiality is, indeed, a medium within itself. I actually have a draft article on the necessity of ‘גילוים’ — which is generally a term with a somewhat negative connotation — but suffice it for now to use the working premise that the framework for a relationship is, in fact, the discussions about the pizza. 1. Feelings are (anyway) not present within words; they don’t live in the same world as articulation or communication; [cannot, technically, even be shared, although there is always the demand for a counterpart (technically?)], and 2. Forced or premature emotions are (destined to be) short lived or fake (as in לא תהי’ משכלה).
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The relationship does not have to be ‘real’ to progress; the reality of the relationship is a work in progress. Further, maybe, the progress becomes the relationship, the reality.
Returning to our point: there are, however, some times when one is expected to be normal. Real. When it actually isn’t okay to be casual, artificial, cordial, gaurded, appropriate.
We all do a fantastic job of behaving in public, and in private, and of being productive members of society, and of establishing our crutches, our boundaries, and our outlets. But, at some point, and sometimes, in certain settings, it becomes not okay to be full of shit.
Maybe, unfortunately, only in our own mind.
One of those behaviors is simcha — happiness.
Just like we wrote recently, that light is never ‘seen’ (rather, objects become visible when light encounters them…); happiness is not a feeling — at least in its unadulterated form. As long as one has an awareness of their happiness, there is some subtle flaw in it.
One doesn’t feel their hand unless there’s something wrong. One doesn’t think over a situation unless it lies outside of his ‘baseline’ reality — unless its special. One doesn’t feel happy unless there exists a contrast.
Other ‘feelings’ or emotions display this dynamic as well, but that isn’t their defining factor. Love, as above, needs a subject — one can’t love while they’re alone, or internally… — but the love remains the property of the lover. Every emotion has, as well, a set of properties which extend beyond the actual inarticulate ‘feeling’, and which share the behaviors or the colors of the feeling/emotion: Love expresses in closeness, for example. Emotions form the motion, the direction of the entity/person, yet they do not — inherently, necessarily, and by definition — exclude or transcend the person: they are they person; or at least the person’s expression, even internally.
So not only is it okay that emotions exist on a canvas, further, emotions are meant to be felt. [While there also exists the phenomenon across any emotion of her abstraction from all tangibility — even internal discernment, that isn’t a standard or an integral part of her actual definition.]
No so happiness.
Happiness’s ‘property’ card is basically just that: abstraction. Healthy and successful interaction of all parts; appropriate natural normality; elusiveness.
Happiness — not to be confused with pleasure — is external, expressive. Awake and active: not thinking and deliberate. Not static, but alive — and growing.
Its almost unfair to happiness itself to feel her.
The awareness of any feeling indicates a coercion or a instability; an unsettling. Yes, its necessary to control and to facilitate our feelings — as above — but when the emotion, any emotion, is (finally) expressed (even internally), it becomes necessary to cut the strings, to turn off the thought process, and to not force or synthesize anything which is not present; to avoid articulating and to not even notice anything which is present. But, that doesn’t mean the feeling isn’t felt: it means that the ‘felt’ is a different language.
Happiness is felt?
So that’s somewhat what was discussed over Passover. Today, we considered — and for this I don’t necessarily have a source, at least not immediately, as a disclaimer — that maybe we can reverse the way we’re looking at happiness. Not that happiness is a feeling which is abstracted beyond being felt, but that happiness is the state of abstraction. In other words, that the healthy person is happy.
Not that happiness when it culminates (so to speak — although, as above, it inherently keeps growing, and has to keep growing..) is abstracted beyond even (noticing to the simple extent of) feeling, and that is the proper function within the entity or person; but that a properly functioning person is happy.
- That would account for why the path to happiness is necessarily (and in contrast to many other ‘emotions’) faking and acting as a happy person would; almost grasping happiness from the opposite end. The utmost superficiality…
- That would account for the alternative — depression — being the complete opposite: the lack of function universally; the lack of precedent other than that lack of function; etc.
Now, this doesn’t divorce ‘happiness’ from tools, roadmaps, and circumstances. On the contrary, this reframes the paradigm of happiness from being a standalone feeling or emotion, and evolving of its own accord / being a focus or target on its own right.
Its hard to describe what the holiday of Lag Baomer is. Traditionally maybe neglected as a picnic day, there are limited customs, and yet there is ample content.
Lag Baomer revolves around the idea that pnimius hatorah, the deepest, most subtle, abstract, elusive, hidden parts of the Torah are exempt from, and (can) effect a sublimation of, negativity.
There is no conflict, there is no counterpart. Its not a construction or climax; its the expression of truth which by definition does not compete with observation: it is reality. Its the utmost — infinite, hence, growing — perspective, which passively, automatically, and unspokenly includes.
We’ll leave it at that, plus that that expression translates into celebration on the day of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s passing — one who passed away with the word ‘life’ on his lips — and that that expression translates into love for one’s neighbor.
