It's a New Year according to the secular calendar that we live and work by and every where people are making resolutions for what they would like to accomplish in 2012.
Some people who are worrying on the urban legends of the world ending in December of this year have obviously low expectations.. I mean if we make it to January of 2013 they will feel it was a good year :)
On the other hand, a new year that begins on Hey Teves... as we go from Hey Teves into the New Year cannot be a bad thing. The 5th day of the Hebrew Month of Teves is a day that is symbolic for "victory" and so I'm focusing on that and not the Mayan calendar. I mean... considering the Mayan's didn't seem to see the conquistadors coming... should we really believe them?
I do think we are moving fast into a new consciousness on a world wide collective level of a new world order based on goodness and kindness vs the old order of selfishness and conquest.
In truth every day is a new day, every moment is a new world as we can choose to make positive choices or negative choices. Goes back to the beginning of time... good choice, bad choice ... and on any given day we all make bad choices but we try to make more good choices than bad... we try to make a difference in this beautiful world around us and all day long we are forced to make choices.
Do I eat a chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge poured over it for dessert or save the calories or points for a Shabbos treat or put it on a list for "what I want on my birthday" or do we devour the decadent dessert and try to spend 3 hours at the gym working off the calories or give up and decide to start that diet tomorrow?
Do we cheat? Do we lie? Do we steal? Do we give to charity or buy a lotto ticket or make a deal with God that if we win the lotto THEN we will give money to charity?? A famous Rabbi told me once the reason people like that don't win the lotto is God doesn't need you to win the lotto to give charity. He was a funny, practical sort of man... logically true but then again I've heard from so many how they would give so much charity IF they won the lotto. We should all have that test I suppose ... but we can all win the biggest prize of all by giving charity every day even in small amounts, still we have to make that decision and more so do that act of writing the check or clicking on the link or putting a penny in a pushka.
Pregnant women have the biggest choice of all... what sort of birth they want to select and then they pray that they won't have to have an emergency C Section that robs them of that beautiful birthing experience they longed for..
Just the thought that women today we "long for a birthing experience" is something that could not be comprehended just a few decades ago or centuries ago. It is hard for us to really understand how far we have come from the day when our great-great grandmothers found out that their daughter was pregnant and she spent most of the 9 months praying that her daughter would not die in childbirth. She prayed that her own baby daughter now grown would live through the childbirth itself more than she prayed for a healthy grandchild.
Really... honest. Years ago when a woman found out she was "with child" it was considered a possible death sentence... on one hand as natural as the sun rising and yet... so many women died giving birth, so many babies died while the mother lived, so many mothers died with their babies that it was a natural part of the order of life. A man with 2 or 3 small children now motherless quickly moved on to a new wife and hoped she would make it through childbirth when her time came.
Ever look at a lot of family trees? You see all those small branches with one child or two children and then the new branch (new wife) and four or five more babies... and sometimes even a third branch with more children and a newer wife.
We are so lucky today when we choose which childbirth we want and begin to pick out names for the baby that we know the sex of that it's hard for us to even imagine that just 100 years ago.. women prayed to live to see their baby alive.
We learn that in the times of Moshiach women give birth without pain... and over the last 50 or 60 years we have been moving rapidly towards that day when the way of childbirth is truly without pain.
My mother thought she was there when she was about to give birth to me... they knocked her out (she didn't feel nothing, trust me) and they reached in with forceps and dragged me out of her warm womb, which may explain the headaches I have had most my life ;) I mean seriously? What were they thinking?
Well, they were thinking it was SAFE for the baby and the doctors were in control and it was "painless" and that was a lot better than taking your chances in the rice paddies or hoping the midwife that came to your house late at night was able to deliver a healthy baby.
Painless yes... but I'm not sure that's what the idea of painless childbirth was all about but it was a definite step in the right direction ...
Next came the 1960s and 1970s of Natural Childbirth...where the mother experienced the joy of transition and feeling the baby slip/slide out into the doctor's waiting arms was more "natural" but it was not exactly painless. It was more a matter of mind over matter... supposedly if you took enough classes and practiced panting you were in control and aware of what was happening and able to process the pain differently... and well I thought when I did it this was about as close as you could come to that time when we give birth without pain.. I was lucky, I panted, can't remember much of the pain and out slid the babies... who went on to become part of the Rebbe's Army of Hashem.
Then came the 1980s and we tried Leboyer or "modified Leboyer" which meant the lights were off... it was peaceful, possibly in the water...this new peaceful generation of babies would be born in a quiet, secure, serene environment unlike the way I was yanked out with what was basically salad tongs as I cried the whole way as my mother slept peacefully knocked out for almost 24 hours...
I had a modified Leboyer as the hospital didn't allowed the water pool part, but the doctor had this great voice that sounded like James Earl Jones reading Psalms and all the lights were off except for one just above the doctor for him to see and my baby girl came out peacefully, beautifully and I felt very little pain... they placed her onto me and they let her nurse while she was still attached as they went about cutting the cord and finishing up their part. It was a beautiful peaceful moment. Then again in her teens she did go through a dark gothic phase of dress and wore army boots for about 3 years making me wonder if she remembered that wonderful early, peaceful bonding moment we had way back then.... A few friends had their babies in the water... well their children do like to go to the ocean a lot but then so do I and I wasn't born in a pool of water. I do think it was a step in the progress of childbirth... calm, controlled, peaceful... a little pain but who notices pain when you are staring into the eyes of your newborn baby?
Fast forward to the beginning of November... I was in the hospital with my friend's daughter who was debating whether to have an epidural or not. There are some risks with an epidural but the children of the natural childbirth mothers all seem to prefer the epidural. Know what? You are awake for the birth and the bonding but there is no pain... they are having painless childbirths... much the way it should be as we march into Geulah into the New World Order...
Of course to me.. it makes more sense to do it naturally and the moment the baby is out... you feel like it's all over but the nurse in the hospital was very annoyed and she kept saying over and over, "Why should she feel pain?? Why should she be in pain?" and then the light went on in my head and I giggled quietly and thought... what to this young nurse is totally logical is totally illogical for all the generations of women who came before her.. to this young nurse having a baby in pain is totally illogical and foreign, if not down right cruel.
In the days of Moshiach women give birth without pain... that's one of the first things I ever learned on a practical level of what the world will be like, and it seemed hard to conceive or even imagine. I thought we had mastered the pain thing with the denial of pain during Natural Childbirth.. seems I was wrong and we kept evolving until where we are today in most hospitals when mother's get epidurals and give birth without pain.
"Why should we give birth in pain?"
Good question... why indeed?
We truly live in a new world, so different from the days when women squatted down in the rice patties and the baby and mother either lived or she was buried nearby...
Just like the people who wandered in the desert and received manna every morning could not imagine leaving the desert even after being saved from Egypt they were still afraid to trust and go into the land of Milk and Honey. Looking back it makes no sense to us but to them they were afraid and believed the spies rather than Caleb who had total faith in Hashem.
We get comfortable with what we know...how we live... who we are ... our known enemies are better than the unknown and the new often scares people. I was scared for her to have an epidural while the nurse wondered why I would want her to give birth in pain.. and my own daughter-in-law had a fast, simple scheduled c-section because the baby was not cooperating and unlike the old days when the mother would simply have died in childbirth..and the baby... they did a little fast, bikini cut, folded back the skin gently while she was wide awake ..her husband taking video and they slid the beautiful baby out and allowed her to hold the baby, nurse the baby and smile into her babies face.. something mind you my mother couldn't do until after she woke up groggily a day or so after my birth. Even the very thought that had my much loved daughter in law had her baby back a hundred years ago.... or tried to.... makes tears form in my eyes at the thought of what she might have had to go through and whether or not she or the baby would have even made it.
We really need to open up our eyes and realize how far we have come in 5772... 2012 and how lucky that we are that our babies are born without pain, mothers today look forward to childbirth and how blessed we all are to live in the times we do.. times of Geulah, glorious times...
So... maybe you are deciding how to deliver your baby or whether to eat a delicious slice of carrot cake or maybe you are deciding on whether to look at 2012 as a time when you see and feel the power of Moshiach in your life in every decision you make and with every step you take this year..
Live it, feel it... be empowered by it and pass it along by doing Acts of Goodness and Kindness and giving charity. Live your life with your eyes wide open, not keeping them closed for fear of what the future might bring.
Be empowered... be happy... live... love and experience the Joy of the world around you and give thanks you are who you are living in today's amazing, miraculous world.
We truly do stand on the shoulders of the generations who came before us... enjoy the view in 5772!
