It was the end of a long summer Shabbos, the Atlanta sun finally giving in after 9 pm. I started my computer booting and prayed the evening service; I turned on my phone and prepared for the Havdalah, the dividing ritual. We thank G-d over flames and spices for separating the holy from the mundane…
I logged in and opened Chrome; the tabs of the previous week reasserted themselves like dry bones rising. Tweetdeck’s columns unfolded, first on the left my TL, second, my notifications, and there among the likes and the retweets, I saw the Creator had followed me.
His username was not “G-d” (that would be the first sign it was some fourteen-year-old) but rather a male name of vaguely Asian provenance. The profile picture was of a male, in his twenties, of vaguely Asian provenance. I knew in my head that G-d was not a man in his twenties of vaguely Asian provenance, G-d forbid. G-d is of course without a body or the form of a body, He probably does not use Twitter, and if He did, He would not follow me.
In my gut, however, I felt the world open. I was young again, in the way the morning is young, how at the sunrise everything is possible and the constant renewal of the world pierces the pitted facade of nature like the breaking dawn, and the soul tastes, just for a second, the infinite potential of what might be.
I felt something I haven’t for many years, a slight excitement deep inside at a meeting, the only feeling that can fight the implacable entropy of death and parting.
Who is this new person, and what gifts do they bear?
What is this new development, unexpected and wonderful?
What is this delightful shock, this pleasant upending, the joy of expecting the exceptional?
It is like being a child again, expecting each day to bring something not just new but something good. It is like having faith, knowing not just in your head but in the root of your stomach that your life has a plan, that it is progressing from a fine thing to a better thing, and that all you have to do is enjoy it. It is the feeling that somebody up there likes you.
It is not logical, this feeling. It does not remember experience or wisdom, the way people and life disappoint with disheartening consistency. It does not remember the reason you don’t feel it anymore. It is overwhelming precisely because it is a negation of experience, of the causal link between the past and the future. It is in this feeling that Hume came closest to being right. There is no induction; the past does not dictate the future; our soul can step outside the flow of time and see from above that there are no rules that can’t be broken.
The rules of time are an illusion, made to be broken, and if life has disappointed us it has no bearing on what it will do tomorrow.
The stranger who follows you on Twitter may come bearing friendship or strange gifts so great they are beyond imagining.
Then the moment is over. He follows 4,110 and is followed by 5,386, and when I join their ranks I get an automated DM. He wants me to follow his Instagram.
Blessed are you, G-d, who separates between the holy and the mundane.
For now.