Finding My Center

My favorite game on the WiiFit is the soccer ball game. In case you haven't played the game, soccer balls are kicked at you, and you have to lean left or right – or stay centered – to block them with the head of your virtual reality icon. Sometimes items that are not soccer balls fly out at you and you have to dodge them, and sometimes soccer balls and other items come flying out together and you have to dodge what needs to be avoided while blocking the soccer ball.

The hardest shots to block are the ones that come at you dead centerIronically, the hardest shots to block are the ones that come at you dead center. It requires the most concentration and core strength to maintain dead center. And, ironically, you have to stay very relaxed and in the moment. If you become rigid from the anticipation or get distracted, you will get hit in the face.

Finding my center is the challenge. It's relatively easy to live within any narrowly-defined culture. Yes, it's restraining, but the parameters of making decisions are also easier. When I starting living a Torah observant lifestyle, I felt like a big baby in an altered universe – how many mistakes would I make in just the first hour after waking up?

I used to think I knew how to wake up, go to the bathroom and have a cup of coffee without being in danger of breaking a rule. Little did I know! A rebel without a cause, ex-ashram groupie, and flamenco dancer, I was taking on the "yoke of heaven." But I was also an attorney getting a master's degree in tax law and had changed my political party from Unitarian to Republican, so you could say I was getting in touch with more of my stringent nature.

When I started living religiously observant, I was so preoccupied with "getting it right" and not disappointing my frum-from-Sinai mentor, that I was leaning way to the right. There was a security to knowing the confines, to knowing what behavior was considered righteous and what was considered heretical. In trying so hard to assume a new identity, I had kind of lost my own. I was leaning so far to the right I became unbalanced.

We readers of the Book know that the Jewish people developed in the womb of Egypt. Is there anything more confining - yet nurturing - than a womb? Without the distractions and confusion of world without boundaries, I was in a great space to do a lot of learning and growing.

I could have stayed there. I could have elected myself president of the "Who Decides Who Goes to Hell Club". But stuff happened. I recently read a quote to the effect that any religious tenet that you have not had to personally bang up against is unknown dogma to you.

Let's just say that I was confronted with a situation, which forced me to reconsider my views, because it was not an abstract idea, not someone else's test – it was in my face. I could close my eyes and my heart, or I could admit that I don't know who's on the guest list of heaven or hell. I also woke up to the fact that a religious life is not a protected bubble of safety. Mumbai happens. All kinds of people will let you down. Rabbis aren't perfect. There are no guarantees, no formulas for predicted outcomes.

I don't know who's on the guest list of heaven or hellSo do I want to lean all the way to the left now? Nah – been there and done that. There is no redemption for me in a cheese steak, even from Pat's Steak at 2:00 in the morning, which, in case you didn't know is the very best time to eat a cheese steak. For me, that is – no judgment here.

In the WiiFit soccer game, two objects that are not soccer balls come flying at you that you have to dodge. One is a shoe. That's easy. That's the cheese steak. The other is a little black and white panda bear head that looks a lot like the black and white soccer ball.

You have to make a split second decision – which one is it? Do I dodge or block? When you successfully dodge a shoe, you get a point, and if you get hit with it you lose a point. But if you get hit with a flying panda bear head – you lose five points and, you win the same when you are successful.

I know it sounds dumb, but my struggle with the obvious cheese steak issues of life is really only a one-pointer. The panda bear is the challenge because it is so much subtler.

Whether I am leaning all the way to the left or the right obviously makes a difference in my lifestyle and choices, but ultimately both are unbalanced, both are limiting and confining and not authentic for me – a form of Egypt. My challenge is to strengthen my core, maintain my center of balance, and sharpen my perceptions between what is real and what looks like reality but is not.

So daily I ask myself these questions: With what do I fully engage and what do I release or let pass me by? Where should I focus my energies now? To what should I surrender? More importantly, how can I just relax more and be in the moment? At the end of every game on the WiiFit, you get your score and rank. Now wouldn't that be helpful in life – or would it?