Today, I was thinking about the version of myself that existed before all of this.

The one who didn't know war. Or plague. Or protests. Or terrorism.

The one who dreamed of this land and inhabited it in my imagination.

There was so much that she didn't know. She could not have imagined what this decade would look like in her life or in the context of the world.

Sometimes I play a game. I close my eyes and reopen them at any random time, and I look around my environment. I presume that I know nothing about when and where I am, and I ask a younger part of me that still lives within, if I can decipher anything about what my life is like in this future timeline I'm living in now.

I look around with fresh eyes, and I can identify the little stickers with prices in shekels and maybe the Hebrew on the products next to my bed. The trisim in the windows and the Jerusalem stone outside my window and I know where I am.

I wonder what it would be like to be young and open my eyes to seeing my husband sitting, reading next to me; would we recognize him? Would he seem like a stranger or someone I've always known?

Would we easily know that the two beautiful teenagers next to us were our children? Tall and lean, blue and hazel eyes, hair just like me? Freckles like my brother? Cheekbones like their father?

There are so many wonderful things that she doesn't yet know, this younger self. All the books I've written and read, photos I've taken of moments I never want to forget. Friends I've met and loved. The choices I'm proud of and the way I live my life. What my family looks like today and the way we live. It would all be new to her, and she would be so happy.

But she also doesn't know about what has come to pass.

If I told her what we are living through, she probably wouldn't believe me.

She would be frightened, and in awe that I'm still standing on my feet, and still manage to get out of bed in the morning.

She likely would say the same thing I say now; that these must be the footsteps to the messianic era; a painful promise, but prophesied nonetheless

I reckon we would have some challenging conversations.

But what if I opened my eyes in her world once again?

I love this exercise. Because there I find a world where life was peaceful. The complications were limited. The potential was endless. Where I was not yet entrenched in habits or thought patterns, dynamics, or my own self-dialogue.

And when I get stuck, sometimes I need to go further back, and remember truly simple days- my own beginning. Maybe it's summer and not too hot. The bbq is grilling, and I'm playing in the freshly mowed grass and dancing in the sprinkler, and my sister is throwing the ball to me, and we are wearing matching dresses like always. Maybe my brothers are babies and they smile at me the way their children do now, with the same eyes, the same long lashes, sleepy after a long day of play.

My grandparents are still with us, and are young, as are all of us, and my parents are throwing a big party like they always do, and there's nothing for me to worry about because everything is well, and I am safe.

There is nothing I need to worry about.

Right now, today, where everything feels so heavy, and I am worried about so many things, and life feels so endlessly complicated...

I'm going to spend some time in that backyard remembering the smell of the grass and the grill, and the tickle of the sprinkler hose, my sister's arms wide to me, my brothers' baby warmth, and my family's voices, and what it was like to just be safe and happy.

Maybe I can borrow her nervous system, that little girl I used to be.

Just for a little while.

Before I get called back to this drastically different, miraculous, painful, complicated, awe-inspiring reality.