We’ll Even Laugh

Today (Tuesday) was the first full day of Rosh Hashannah, and in his sermon, the rabbi addressed the question I’d asked myself the night before: how can we give thanks to, or seek comfort in, a God right now without feeling absurd? His response: despite what some may believe about God’s power, we really have no guarantee of physical security in our lives. After all, everyone dies eventually. What we do have, he said, is a guarantee of spiritual security. That is a source of comfort and a reason for thanks.

I couldn’t really argue with what he had to say. But you know, religion seems to be a lot like law. When you’re given facts that contradict what you thought was true (God will protect us, but then 5,500 people die senselessly), instead of losing your faith you merely change your interpretation of that faith. It bends — even if it has to twist into a pretzel — but it does not break. I admire that.

Several times in the past week (has it already been a week? has it only been a week?), I’ve been envious of people who have recently died or who are near death — people who died a month ago, before any of this happened; people who are 90 years old and won’t have to live in this world much longer. I read an obituary of an old person, and I think, wow, that person had a long, full life. Who knows what we’ll have?

In the summer of 1987 I was thirteen years old. I was at summer camp up in New Hampshire. One night we went for a hike and camped by a lake. The sky was filled with a universe of stars. As we sat outside, someone (maybe me) brought up the fear of nuclear war. How can we go on with our lives in such a world, I asked? My counselor said: we just do. If you think about those things all the time, you’ll go nuts. There’s no use worrying about what you can’t change. Most of the stuff we worry about never comes to pass.

That’s still true. We got through 45 years of thinking that the planet had a good chance of being annihilated. We got through it. And we even laughed sometimes. We did that — we’ll do it again.

We still have to keep up hope.

Hope, by the way, is faith — even for people who claim they don’t do religion.

Did anyone catch Letterman last night (Monday night)? It was his first show back since the attacks. He’s usually ironic and irreverent, but he spoke for a long time, with raw emotion, in all seriousness, and from the heart. He openly questioned whether he should even have come back on the air yet.

It was the same thing with Conan O’Brien tonight, his first show back. I didn’t catch the first half of Jay Leno tonight, so I can’t write about him, but as for Dave and Conan — who both produce their shows in Manhattan — I have so much admiration and respect for those guys. It’s fascinating to watch funny people respond to tragedy. Humor is often a defense mechanism, a response to tragedy, so the funniest people often turn out to be those with the most pain. Therefore, their responses weren’t really surprising. But still moving.

I can’t imagine what Saturday Night Live is going to do when it begins its new season soon.

It’s interesting to watch our entertainment venues struggle with what to do right now. They’re not any different from us — after all, these shows are produced by people. But usually we turn to them for some sort of slick certainty, and yet they’re as much in the dark as we are right now. We’re all equal.

They will take steps, gingerly, feeling their way around this new world. Conan said tonight that he didn’t see how they could do shows anymore — but, he said, they’ll try to do tonight’s show, and then tomorrow they’ll try to do another one, and so on, and so on.

It’s kinda like all of us. We’ll live another day. And then another one. And then another one. And so on.

And you know what? Like them, we’ll even find things to smile about. And laugh about.

Not all the time. But sometimes.

And whenever we do, this whole “life” thing will seem worthwhile again.