What am I?

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Very few tragedies could compare to a woman losing her husband and all her 5 children all at once. Usually one goes to shiva house and finds six people sitting shiva for one person, not one person sitting shiva for six.

These last few days I find my mind turning to Avivit Shaer every once in awhile on its own accord.
It just cannot to break away from this tragic story because my mind needs to address so many swirling existential questions in this horrific maelstrom.

What are we?
What about our reality can we trust?
How do I define myself?
Am I a father? A husband?
Who was Avivit yesterday?
Who is she today?
One minute follows the previous which follows the one before that and they turn into clumps of hours and mounds of days.
They then become mountains of expectations. I expect to be what I was before, because....I'm not sure why..but probably because it's what I expected yesterday and it happened.
Expectations in turn..morph into a sense of entitlement...because after all I'm entitled to all I have this minute..because after all..I expected it a minute ago and it happened.
The mountains of expectations become an alternate reality.
I expect those that love me will continue to love me because they loved me yesterday..and then a slight fork in the road develops..one road is the road of reality and the other, the road of expectations.
I expect that there will be enough money to sustain me because there was enough yesterday and because my ego won't allow me to see the growing debt..and once again there's a fork in the road..
I expect that I won't have pain today because I did not have pain yesterday..and so expectation leads to entitlement which leads to anger when there is pain..

This is such flimsy reasoning and yet it's how we function.

So..what am I?

I know that I cannot trust my expectations. The illusion might create some sense of stability but they also rob me of true happiness. They rob me of that sense of intense gratitude that I should be feeling every waking minute because there's no gratitude in getting what you're entitled to be getting.

If I cannot trust expectations then what then can I trust?
I can only trust reality.
I can trust that what's happening to me at that second is really happening to me..devoid of all expectation.
But what is reality?
Reality is this moment...empty of ego, entitlement and expectation.
Reality is allowing yourself to jump off the top of the staircase..because the next moment is waiting to catch you..
Reality is lonely.
Reality is exhilarating.

What am I?
I'm not a "what"
Tables and chairs are "whats".
I cannot be defined and quantified.
I weep at the death of my expectations.... It's ok..
I leap off the edge of the mountain...into reality..
Into God
Because when I eliminate my ego and sense of entitlement that comes along with it..all that's left..
Is God



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