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Over the last few days, as part of my goal to lead prayers on the Jewish New Year, I have made a big effort to understand the prayers I will be leading as deeply as I can.
After a day spent wrestling with graphic design and several other things I generally hate doing, I was very happy to produce a guide which I have now made available to anyone who might find it useful.
But this article isn’t really about the guide.
It is about curiosity.
There is sometimes an assumption that as we get older, become ill or acquire disabilities, everything moves in one direction: downhill. We lose abilities, opportunities and independence, and therefore somehow become lesser versions of the people we were before.
I don’t think that is necessarily true.
PSP has unquestionably taken an enormous amount from me. I wouldn’t choose it in a million years. But the absence of work, the time I now have, and everything I have learned over the years, particularly during the last two, have given me a different perspective on life and faith which I think has real value.
More than that, I think I have become more curious.
I find myself probing things that I previously accepted. I ask questions I never thought to ask. I want to understand why something is written in a particular way, why a prayer is structured as it is, what an idea really means and whether something I have believed for years actually stands up when I examine it properly.
People may disagree completely with some of the conclusions I reach. That doesn’t bother me. The important thing is that I am asking the questions.
Perhaps strangely, I also feel that this curiosity has brought me greater clarity of thought. My life contains far fewer distractions than it once did. I have more time to think, read, question and connect ideas. I no longer have the pressures of a career constantly competing for space in my head.
None of that makes PSP worthwhile. Nothing could.
But now that I have it, I am determined to use whatever opportunities exist within the situation rather than concentrate only on those it has taken away.
I have always had a certain amount of stubbornness. Thankfully, I still have it in spades.
And perhaps that stubbornness now comes with something else.
Curiosity.
PSP has narrowed my world in many ways. Curiosity has widened it in others.
