Not All About Me

Pegrebin begins her chapter describing the historical basis of Purim and acknowledges holiday tension, per usual.  In her words, “Purim is a dark story marked by a crazy party.” Read here for a brief outlines and central themes.

While I’ve never celebrated Purim in the party, costume, drinking until you’re unaware type of way, it is the Jewish holiday I’ve contemplated most, and mostly about me.  Something about Ester.  Something about hiding.  Something about deciding not to hide anymore.

While I've never celebrated Purim, I enjoyed explaining it. My non-Jewish family seldom ask about Jewish holidays, but Purim is accessible because it’s a costume holiday. (My family loves Halloween.)  We easily ooohh and aaahhh at the babies turned to stuffed animal look-alikes.  Full of feminist wisdom, we lament my niece's choice of ‘blond’ Disney wigs instead of being a princess in her own luxurious dark waves.

While this year I do not plan to celebrate Purim, Pegrebin’s chapter brings forward another way to think of Ester and the Purim story.  Pegrebin asks her reader and herself, “Can you do your part to guide a place that has challenged and changed you?”

This question is very much relevant to my professional experiences.  I exhale. Somehow, this holiday is always all about me, who and what I've not admitted to being.  My immediate reaction is to answer a question with a question.  “What if you think you have done your part and it only changed you for the worse?  How long do you continue to respond to the questions no one asked you? Or the change, no one appears ready to support?”

Esther’s marriage, too, perhaps already made her someone she liked a little less.  Costumes and alcohol might make us enjoy who we are a little more.  Perhaps, this Purim, it's time to answer with another question. "How can I make it not about me?"

Pegrebin answers this question with a common Jewish answer, a fast. Fasts connect us to something larger, focus our attention on standing behind someone or something. Fasts also remind us that no act should be taken lightly when we take it on.  This fast specifically represents Esther preparing herself to confront her husband (and the death order against the Jewish people).  Pegrebin center’s this fast and it's impact in her conversation with Dr. Erica Brown, an Esther-expert.  

“Esther was transformed by her newfound bravery.  She took on a task that she first refused.”  Dr. Brown summarizes both the fast and Esther’s confrontation to lift up the role of tests and how people transform themselves.  

Stepping up, leaning in, being a leader.  Instead of saying, ‘this isn’t for me’. . . you say, ‘it’s my time’.

The categorization strikes me as very main character energy.  It is part of the Hero’s Journey, ‘refusal of the call’.  

My stomach aches as if I was already fasting pre holiday. 

After roughly five years of leaning into my most recent call to action, I had retreated.  I decided to focus on survival which meant limiting contact with the engagements that more often than not seemed to elevate poorer versions of myself.  Too aware of what others might be seeing, I had lost track of which was the mask and which was me.

This of course is the task.  To find some type of meaning inside epic stories for your everyday decisions.  To find impact in the everyday.  It gives us narrative motion, main character energy, when few people’s lives are of the ‘epic’ kind. 

Still, Pegrebin isn't done. She starts and ends her chapter with the idea that in the face of uncertainty or hidden danger, we can celebrate that we survived another day.  

While this year I do not plan to celebrate Purim, like Esther I can prepare for its possibility as a supporting character. For all those who are on the cusp of action, I can attempt to stand in solidarity with both their fear and optimism. From afar, I can appreciate the contradictory hands joing around a yet to be filled celebratory glass, that isn't all about me.