Number Our Days

[mixingbowl]

Heschel: Pain is the avenue to getting a soul, getting quality from yourself. This is how you get a life that's really on the essence. You got to go about pain the right way. You couldn't escape it, so you go into it. Then it melts. You get from this the whole thing, the idea of life itself and the result is you're able to take pain in and ignore it because you're so full of living...When I start to talk about pain it leaves me. That's why I don't like to talk so much. All that I got to say is painful, and when I tell somebody about it, then I feel better. But that's no good. It comes back to you when you're not looking, whoosh, it jumps out from behind the stove and grabs you. So when the pain comes, I am patient. I shut up, active silence; I bear it, wait, even overnight, but I mean I bear it, I don't take a tranquilizer, a sleeping pill, some schnapps, or watch television. I stand before it, I call the pain out. After you go through this you discover you got choices. You become whole. This is the task of our life. I want to live this kind of life, so I can be alive every minute. I want to know when I'm awake, I'm altogether awake. When I'm asleep, I'm asleep.
Hannah: This sounds to me like something masochistic.