The World's Great Suffering

Substack

Today, the suffering in our world suddenly pierced my heart and overwhelmed me with a feeling of a great but helpless love.

No, I am not talking about war-zone murders and maimings, although there are a terrifyingly high number of them--Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, Myanmar, etc. No, my friends, Gaza does not compare.

France has been on fire for weeks now, and the flames have spread to Italy and Germany. A friend who has just returned from London reported that, as she walked on Hampstead Heath, she noticed how crowded it was with women wearing niqab, hijab, and burqas.

Portland, Maine (!) has just been asked to remove foster puppy dogs kept in a separate classroom because Muslim families and students objected to the presence of cute little dogs—there for the purpose of giving students a chance to "interact" with them only during playtimes.

Look: Many years ago, a very dear friend traveled with a security dog. She had the misfortune to hail a taxi driven by a Muslim man in New York City. He flew into a rage and ordered her out; she refused to go, but when she called me, I told her to get out while she was still alive. She finally did.

I remember how starving dogs were treated in Afghanistan--they were cursed, chased and stoned. Sometimes shot. How any of them remained alive is a mystery.

I am not forgetting the many train, airplane, and car crashes, the earthquakes, the dangerous storms, the floods, the droughts, all of which have plagued humanity from the start--and some of which may be man-made. Or not.

But today, I must set aside mere "politics" in order to write about those who are suffering and who are closer to me personally.

I am, first, thinking about all those friends and colleagues who have been "cancelled," not politically, but by dementia, Alzheimer's, and cancers. I have two close friends in "facilities," and I've not had the courage to visit them. This one is too far away (all the way downtown and crosstown!). The other one has too complicated a procedure to enter the building: two different and very small elevators, key cards galore, ID required. Still: Very Bad Me.

So many have died "on me." I know, I know: None of us are meant to live forever and yet the losses are always unexpectedly, ridiculously surprising. And always unacceptable.

I am also thinking of a close in-law who has been forever laid low by myasthenia gravis and a version of colitis and who was just hospitalized for pneumonia. This poor soul, who is super-witty and patient about it all, has also been "sentenced" to weekly infusions of Magic Stuff to strengthen her almost non-existent immune system. An almost completely medicalized life. I am stunned by how cheerful she remains.

I am talking about another very dear friend and past companion in many an honorable war who is now living with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Bell's Palsy, and Giant Cell Arteritis--and with much else. In her case, she has not been cancelled, not at all; she continues to do her mighty and saintly work despite the ongoing and agonizing pain and the lack of proper medical care in the non-Western country in which she resides.  She only wrote me about this today. But she also wrote this:

"Oh, Phyllis, you are so on my mind because we have watched our work and dreams be trampled over even by those close to us.... I think we do what we do for two main reasons. One is that we think we might succeed. The second is that it is too terrible not to try."

She is so eloquent, and it is so heartbreaking when a valiant warrior begins to fail. Or, rather, when the price of keeping on just gets higher and higher.

I have a beloved friend in Israel--a poet, a mystic, a filmmaker--who no longer emails or talks to me. She has intimated that there are so many things wrong with her that there isn't enough time for her to explain them all, and she is also unable to speak.

Oh, I have known heroes in Israel from the 1970s on (maybe from 1948 on), and I am now determined to write about them in order to keep them and their great deeds alive, both to honor them and in order to inspire the coming generations.

As I've been blessed to have reached "old age," like everyone else, my world has grown smaller, even as I remain fully engaged in matters on every continent, host many guests here, manage an enormous correspondence, continue to write--even try to fundraise to keep it all going, but the competition in this area is far beyond intense.

Nevertheless, how lucky some of us are, including myself, to still be alive; to have access to good-enough medical care; to still have our wits about us; and to be able to use our time on earth trying to Do Good. Nothing less will do.

However, if one lives in NYC--woe unto us given the E-bikes and the bike lanes. Last night, I went to meet my family to celebrate a granddaughter's birthday. But there was a bike lane between myself and the restaurant. I stood there, terrified. The cyclists did not stop coming. I personally know two people who have recently been hit by speeding E-bikes and have suffered many broken bones. I've also read about this happening to so many others in this once fair city. Mayor Mamdani will not halt any of this.

This, together with Mamdani's sleuth housing of the homeless, ex-criminals, and the mentally ill in residential buildings; the infernal potholes; the crumbling infrastructure; the omnipresent scaffolding; the violent attacks upon women, children, and the elderly on trains, in parks, on the streets, endangering the peaceful citizenry and degrading our quality of life.

The rabbis have long told us that we live life on a narrow bridge; those alive must be agile acrobats or at least remain flexible. We must also know where we are and take nothing for granted.