Alef: The NEXT Conversation

A Decade's Send-Off

By Ruvym Gilman

2009 becoming 2010 was just going to be another December 31 journey towards January 1st. There would be a house party somewhere, red plastic cups with cheap alcohol, and a flat-screen-LCD tuned to video of a ball-o-lights gently gliding down a shaky pole in some far off place in TV land. But then I came across a recent article in New York Magazine that reminded me that we weren’t just approaching the end of a year, but the end of a decade. This, I thought, was a big deal, and an opportune time for introspection. So with 2010 looming, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on that disaster-less day of January 1, 2000 when the world didn’t collapse because of the Y2K bug and I could never have imagined what December 31, 2009 would look like.

By now I can barely remember a thing about the 90s other than that I was living in the suburbs, that I played a lot of videogames, and that I tried, hopelessly, to combat my acne and look a little less awkward. It was in May of 1999 that I finally asked out the girl I had a crush on for the entire seven years I spent in the Jericho School District. I invited her to the Senior Prom knowing that she’d probably say “no,” but also realizing that if I didn’t do it at that moment, I would regret it forever. I ended up – unsurprisingly – going to that prom dateless, with a few of my equally dateless friends. Then 2000 came and I suddenly found myself in college, living in New York (Fucking) City with no idea about who I was or what I wanted to do or what the heck was going on. And now, somehow, ten random years later, I’m here.

“Here” is me at 27.9, on the cusp of being well into my “late 20s.” To a 17 year-old at NYU, this would have been ancient, close to the dreaded oldness of 30. The 17 year-old thought he would be married by now, maybe even have a few kids packed into a cool SUV (no minivans please). Forget the fact that he didn’t understand anything of love or relationships or what it really means to commit yourself to one person for your entire life. He also expected that by 27 he would have already made an unprecedented and unforgettable impact on the entire world in some area of power or expertise that, at the time, he had yet to discover. That too has not come to pass, even while he has learned to savor the positive impact he can have on his family and his closest friends. At 17 he would never have been satisfied with such a pittance.

At some point he managed to graduate college, go to law school, become an attorney, and to the chagrin of his entire family, leave a good-paying job in a corporate law firm to work for a Jewish non-profit organization. A Jewish non-profit? The 17 year old didn’t even like thinking of himself as Jewish. Beyond his bar mitzvah, the encyclopedic set of Kabbalah books his parents were swindled into buying when he was 8, and a failed attempt to go on Birthright just as the Second Intifada started, he had no Jewish connection at all. The last thing he ever imagined was that, a decade on, he would be wearing the identity on his business card.

In the last ten years he also had the good fortune of meeting some incredible individuals. There were the friends who fixed themselves so prominently into his existence that he could foresee the days when they were all old men sitting in some backyard somewhere drinking beers and talking of the world. Then there were the ones who had the patience to teach him – the kid – about love. They were also the ones who, inadvertently, also taught him about loss. Together all of them proved, in the words of one of those old men in the backyard, that “good or bad, it’s all good.”

So now what? One of the things we (the 17 year old kid and I both) have learned in the last decade is that regardless of what I think, I have absolutely no freaking idea. But there’s something beautiful in the not knowing, and it makes me feel kinda grown-up to be able to say that.

Photo by Joe Lanman, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: Growing Up, New Years

Posted by Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org, Friday, January 1st, 2010, 4:26 pm, Holiday Season.