On choosing life when the sirens sound

A personal essay from Israel

I do not know if I will be here next week. This is not a metaphor. And yet, I get up every morning and make choices as if my life matters, as if the people I love are worth protecting, as if tomorrow is worth imagining. That, I have come to understand, is what hope actually is. Not a feeling that arrives or disappears. A stance. A daily decision to live in a life-affirming way rather than a life-diminishing one.

I did not arrive at this understanding lightly. I am the daughter of two survivors of the Shoah. In my family, hope was never a comfortable or decorative thing. It was a choice made in the face of annihilation, a decision repeated daily to continue, to build, to love, to bring children into the world. For my parents, and therefore for me, hope was always a near-political act. A refusal. A declaration that life has value even when everything around you is trying to prove otherwise. Choosing hope, in the world I came from, was choosing life itself.

Hope, in ordinary life,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)