Connect

“… In 1944, my parents were in a concentration camp in Vichy, France. My mother engineered an escape. She actually got my father out. And my parents walked through the Alps. My mother was pregnant with me. And when they got to the Swiss border, the border was closed to refugees. My mother threw herself into Switzerland. Anything for her was better than going back to the hell she came from. And my father succeeded in smuggling himself a few days later. And in 1944, I was born.

 

Decades later, I’m sitting with my mother in an old aged home in Israel and I cannot bear to see her. She’s sitting in a wheelchair. She doesn’t know who I am. I feel guilty, I feel sad, I’m struggling, I’m angry. This is my hero. Why should she be here? And I realized that I’m not visiting her. I’m with my own emotions. And I make a decision; I’m going to cross the bridge to the world of my mother. I will leave the world where I am struggling and I will go and meet her and I will bring with me new eyes. And so I did, I came, I sat across from her and I crossed the bridge and I landed in her world and I looked at her. And she looked at me and in Yiddish she said, “Du bist meine tochter (you are my daughter).” And I started to cry and with her hands, she gently wiped my tears. She hadn’t recognized me for months. Of course, I hadn’t been there emotionally…

Martin Buber, who said, “Our relationship lives in the space between us. It doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two of us. It lives in the space that we live together.” And he said, “That space is sacred space.”

Marcel Proust said, “The adventure of life is not about discovering new landscape. The adventure of life is seeing the old ones with new eyes.”

My father had the largest collection of Yiddish stories in the universe and he loved to tell them and he laughed harder than anyone when he told his stories. And this story is about Mr. Goldberg, the tailor. So, somebody came to get a suit from Mr. Goldberg, the tailor. And he tries on the suit and he says, “Mr. Goldberg, this suit looks very strange. This sleeve doesn’t fit at all.” And Mr. Goldberg looks very seriously and he said, “You’re right, for that sleeve, you have to hold your hand like that, okay?” Man says, “You know the other sleeve doesn’t fit at all. Look at it.” Mr. Goldberg looks at it and says, “You know, you're completely right. For that sleeve, you hold your hands like that and you put this shoulder like this, okay?” “But what about the right leg? The right leg looks very strange. What about it?” And Mr. Goldberg says, “You’re right, you just have to put your foot a little bit inside like that.”

“What about this one?” He says, “With that one, you put your foot like this.” Well now, the suit was fine and the man comes out of the tailor store and as he is walking in the street, this couple comes by and the woman says to her husband, “What an amazing tailor, a man in this condition, the suit fits him perfectly.” Well, this is us. We are in this suit. We walk around in the suit because we’ve adapted to our life. And we don’t even know that this is a suit, a survival suit. We know that this is us.

For example, if I adapted by being withdrawn and cold and really distant, I think this is me inside the suit. Is our human essence intact? Inside of our survival adaptation, we are our essence. And coming over the bridge allows our spirit to be nourished and this transformation to happen from the survival suit to our true human essence. It is in being with each other that our essence becomes revealed. And so it reminds me of this wonderful saying, “I used to be different and now I am the same.”

I started with a story about my mother. I’d like to tell you one now about grandson, Leo. I was in Istanbul with Leo and we were in bed, snuggling and watching a movie. And at the end of the movie, Leo looked at me and he said, “Bubbe (Grandma), I love you.” And I said, “I love you too, Leo.” And he said, “No, I love you.” And I said, “Sure sweaty, you love me and I love you.” He said, “No bubbe, I LOVE YOU.” And then I understood, he didn’t want me to deflect his love. He wanted me to step over the bridge to come to him and take in the pure essential love he was giving me. And so, I did, I looked at him. I took him in. I let what he was giving me in that moment penetrate and I said, “Leo, I hear you say you love me.” And his face just shone. He was teaching me that it takes courage to be connected.

I’d like to share with you one of my favorite quotes by the Sufi Poets, Rumi of the 13th Century who said, “Beyond right thinking and beyond wrong thinking, there is a field. I will meet you there.” I have a dream. I envisioned 19 million couples honoring the three invisible connectors, honoring the space between them, crossing the bridge to each other and encountering each other human essence to human essence. It is enormously important to me because our children grow in the space between us. The space between the couple is the playground of the child. And when we know how to honor that space and make it sacred, our children can blossom in sacred space.

It isn’t just for couples. It is for human beings and it is for nations. I envision the time when nations will know that the space between them is sacred space; that there is a bridge to cross to know the culture of the other and that we can encounter each other, human essence to human essence. Beyond right thinking and beyond wrong thinking, there is a field…I will meet you there.”

~ Hedy Schleifer