The Almost-Awesome Pond [Revised]

You know how I’ve been complaining about Current Location? How the Jewish community here hasn’t come back post-pandemic? How, forget small pond Jewish community vs. big pond Jewish community – I’d love to just be a fish in a pond instead of a burnt-out piece of coral in a dried-up once-was pond?

Well, we found a pond. An arguably extremely awesome pond. We spent an unquestionably awesome Shabbat there. [Which, given the challenges of spending Shabbat in another community in the pandemic/post-pandemic (whatever you call this) world, is itself kind of miraculous.]

Future self-portrait? Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

Then, after said Shabbat, Husband brought up some points about said pond that were not-so-awesome. I blew up at him. We’d had an unquestionably awesome Shabbat! How could he ruin this for me!

Then Husband clarified, saying (paraphrased) “I thought this pond was pretty awesome too – in fact, this place is probably a better fit for me than for you, and I was just looking out for you.” I found this response somewhat suspicious, but to his credit, Husband is game to move, even ready to make an offer on a house in this place. I should have been thrilled, given how much I have riding on this.

And now, now that we’re talking actual money, and now that Husband has moved on from his doubts of “Is this pond really as awesome as we think it is?” I find myself questioning it, the seeds of doubt he planted earlier that I yelled at him for now taking root.

Hence, I needed to write this post to process.

The Awesome

The Awesome. Image by Tumisu, please consider ☕ Thank you! 🤗 from Pixabay

Vibrant, Active Egalitarian Community

Plenty of people showed up at services. Lots of lay-led participation. Fully egalitarian. Awesome rabbi. I mean, it totally fit the bill. And like, it was the kind of place with enough activity on Shabbat that Husband and I could both imagine ourselves going back to real Shabbat observance again in this place.

Community COVID Comfort

I’ve made no secret of the fact that my COVID risk-tolerance has been on the high side from the beginning. To be clear, I’ve been vaccinated, got COVID, got the booster, wear a mask in any setting whenever it’s required or requested without complaint. But I’ve been ready to get on with normal life and I want to live in a place where Jewish communal life is effectively back to normal.

The COVID case count rates in Current Location and Potential New Pond are approximately the same. However, in Current Location, everyone is way more cautious about everything. In Potential New Pond, people are living life. Going to services. Eating indoors – I forgot to mention, this place had a proper kiddush served indoors. Inviting each other to eat Shabbat meals indoors. You wouldn’t even know there’d been a pandemic. I can hypothesize various factors that may account for the difference, and I’m not going to delve into this here because I want to anonymize these locations. But at the end of the day, I care more about what the experience is vs. what’s driving it. And this new place was like, pretty much normal.

Walkable

Unlike the previous post about a house in a different vibrant, active egalitarian community, finding a place to live within a reasonable, safe, comfortable walk seems feasible. Granted, of course I went and fell in love with an absolutely gorgeous house that was further away, which is annoying. Husband was smart enough to fall in love with a slightly less, but overall still quite gorgeous house that was closer. Look, I’ve made no secret of the fact that Husband is the smart one in this marriage.

The Not-So-Awesome

The Not-So-Awesome. Image by Tumisu, please consider ☕ Thank you! 🤗 from Pixabay

Synagogue Programming

I missed this point when I published this post earlier. The Shabbat services themselves were awesome. There were other aspects of the way this synagogue runs its programming that bugged me.

1. The educational programs for adults did not appeal to me at all
2. They did a lot of “age group” based programming. Eg. “For 20s and 30s“, “For young families”, “For Baby Boomers”, etc.

To be fair, I don’t care for the educational program in Current Location either, so that’s a wash. And this pond certainly isn’t the only one that does the whole program-by-age-group thing. And practically speaking, I get the appeal. But philosophically, I dislike the practice because I fundamentally believe that synagogues should be places where we form multigenerational communal bonds. I also think, and this is a controversial opinion, that in the long-term, this doesn’t actually engage and retain young people – more on that in a future post.

Young Parents

This pond is one that attracts a lot of young parents.

Husband (who, for the record, is older than me), thinks he is a young person with plenty of time to become a parent and he has a great deal of optimism about this. (Personally, I think Normally-The-Smart-One Husband is kind of an idiot on this point.) So Husband views the presence of so many young parents is a huge bonus.

I’ve never viewed young people as a Jewish community selling point generally. And you know how I feel about young parents. And in spite of my misleading blogger handle, I do not think of myself as young. (Don’t worry, I am Jewish! I haven’t completely misled you! “Professional” is kind of subjective though…) But Potential New Pond has a lot of Young Parents. Young parents who are way more sociable than the Young Parents of Current Location (and there are reasons I won’t get into here for that). Young parents, a couple of whom I realized I already knew and still liked. Young parents who were super excited to meet us and hang out with us without making us befriend their children. But still. Young Parents.

If having children actually materializes, this will be a wonderful place to be. If it doesn’t happen, this will be hell. Although it’s not like there’s another place that would be a massive improvement should we not have children.

Rich People

Skip this part if you don’t like tone-deaf first-world problems. In Current Location, we are at about the same socio-economic strata as our peers. In Potential New Pond, there will be people who are considerably richer than us. As a general rule, I don’t love socializing with people richer than me. I always imagine them looking down on me for not making more lucrative career decisions even though I actually do alright for someone bad at goal-setting. I don’t judge or look down on people who make less money than I do. But I can never shake the feeling that the richer people around me will not extend me the same courtesy.

I know, this is a non-problem. I should at least be focused on legitimate issues like whether we can afford to live in Potential New Pond and if the market is better or worse. I should stop first-world whining about imaginary problems like the supposed thoughts of rich people.

Potential New Pond also makes me wonder, in a way that does not feel good at all, how the seemingly not-rich-peers of Potential New Pond make their finances work. I have met enough rich and not-rich people to know that looks can be awfully deceiving, but still. And I do not like the fact that my mind is thinking this way and I don’t even live in Potential New Pond yet.

If You’re Depressed Here…

When I first started therapy, I talked about feeling depressed. Even with my life overall pleasant, there were a lot of circumstantial things I was unhappy about – job, marriage, living situation (both location and physical space.) I made the point to my therapist that I couldn’t tell if changing those things would indeed make me feel happier and less depressed or if I would still feel depressed even after changing them. She acknowledged this.

For better or worse, we both wound up totally ignoring this insight and instead, it wound up being all about changing shit. I got a new job. It didn’t help. Then I got another new job. (I might not have picked the right career path nor am I all that good at my job to be honest, but I am very good at convincing people I’m good at my job.) Of course, I didn’t change everything. I’m still married to Husband (things kind of improved.) I stayed in the same location/apartment (things did not improve at all.)

This isn’t really a reflection about Potential New Pond. It’s more that, while I can think of ways in which living in Potential New Pond would make me a lot happier (The awesome synagogue! The post-COVID normalcy!) I can also see ways in which I’d be just as miserable, if not more so, surrounded by young parents and richer people. The truth is if you’re depressed here, you can be depressed anywhere.

***

Enough rambling. This went on longer and got darker than I’d intended.