At My Friend's Wedding

The other night one of my dearest friends was married...

I drove there, missing the Chupah -the wedding canopy, but making it in time for his grand entrance in the hall.

I've been by many a friend's wedding in the past few years...but never one like this.

It was everything that I wanted, and everything that I feared.

I could not have, at that moment, been happier. Yet a selfish voice inside of me chimed in, and try as I might to suppress it, it sung a melancholy tune. The friend that had traveled the world with me, had put up with my shtick, had laughed and cried with me...would no longer be able to do so.

My friend was leaving to a certain degree...He was stepping down the path of life, while I seemingly stood rooted so firmly in my spot.
My friend was stepping down the path of life, while I stood firmly rooted in my spot. He had looked past his personal inhibitions...I had remained imprisoned by mine.

Ingrained within my soul was a deeply rooted fear: How others see us, what they think, remains an issue of paramount importance. Am I seen as who I am, or how I look? As how I feel I am, or how others think I am?

All these fears passed through my mind at that moment.

Me, me...I, I.

Is that all there is? Is this is what I have come to...obsession with the singularity of my existence?

But in truth the problem is not in how others see me, but rather how I see myself.

If I were to see myself for who I truly am, not as who I wish to be, if I could live up to what I am supposed to be, and not as what I wish, then all would be as it ought.

Of my desires? Plans made, then dashed cruelly asunder by the tumultuous seas upon the jagged teeth of upturned stone that line the shore of life?

"I want You," I say to G‑d. You, however, tell me that You know far better. After all, as Creator, You have the right.

I have my plans, and You have Yours…But while mine may unfold as I wish, they may also not; Yours, however, always will be, and for more I can not wish.

My eyes focus on the groom. His lithe figure, cloaked in the silken gleam of a new kopote -frock coat and girded with a dangling gartel -belt worn by Chassidim during prayer, bobbed on the shoulders of a friend. His arms flying over his head like a rider on a wild bronco, he scanned the crowd - the last rays of the setting sun refracted from the window and glinted in his eyes, his face aglow with fires within and the fires with out.

This is everything I have wanted, and nothing more.
The singularity of my existence is not some separate entity from that of my friend, we are one. I need not fear a dissonance in our relationship, a duality of desires…for when he is happy, then I can not be happier.

The music swells. The crowd roars.

I dance, as I have never danced before.