2020-12-18

Lone Wolf

I already know beyond any doubt that I'm a born lone wolf. I realized this for the first time in my life, though rather vaguely back then, when I left one extracurricular sport club I had been forced to join out of a very small number of choices in my junior high school. I simply felt suffocated to be forced to do the same things as others in a group, which I can define now as rules of the collective ego.

Since then I've left a number of other social groups or collectives for the same reason. The common denominator among them all seems to be that I couldn't know in advance the rules of their respective collective ego, and their alternatives have more or less the same rules. Again I felt suffocated after a certain period of time though I left some of these groups or collectives for some other reasons as well.

The most recent collective I left is my first and so far the last "permanent" workplace, and the second last one is my first and so far the last marriage if marriage can also be considered a social collective.

I somehow feared I would suffer from loneliness after getting doubly divorced, but this fear turned out to be unfounded. Professionally I enjoy and prefer working without being part of any institution where I can't choose for myself with whom to work. Privately I have a mixed feeling - though I do miss opportunities of celebrating Sabbaths and Jewish holidays with a life partner, I have to admit that my private life has become so much easier with far less stress.

But spiritually speaking, an easy life by living alone isn't always a blessing. Hardships we encounter (and get over) throughout our life serve as an important tool for training our soul. I still remember the initial shock when I heard in one of the first lessons in the three-year course in Chabad Hasidism I started to take in November 2018 (and will continue until June 2021) that the most important role our respective spouses play in our married life is to make our lives difficult. Nobody seems to be able to compete with them as the most challenging spiritual weight trainers for us.

This and other teachings of Chabad Hasidism could have saved my marriage, but it's through my divorce that I discovered Chabad Hasidism. Without experiencing divorce first, I might not have been able to fully apppreciate its teachings.