Stoke Newington, London, April 20, 2020
Like everyone in the UK, I too became a new admirer of 99-year-old Capt. Tom Moore this week. The WWII veteran, who uses a walker, announced his decision to walk around his backyard 100 times, until his 100th birthday, which is in late April, in order to raise funds for the NHS.
His original target was to raise 1,000 pounds but the money poured in from all over the world and he managed to raise 70,000 pounds in 24 hours. As of today, he has already completed 100 laps and has raised 25 million pounds. He has promised to continue walking so long as people continue to send money.
This story is very uplifting, and I could not resist the urge to get hooked.
I gobble up everything I can on this man, a widower who won his battle against cancer, who is now part of a high-risk group in this coronavirus crisis but nevertheless continues to serve his nation despite his frailing body and has become a national symbol of sacrifice and heroism. It is no surprise, then, that many have called on Her Majesty, who is still hunkering down in her castle, to knight him
But despite this beating sense of admiration, something has bothered me in this story. Perhaps it's one of those things that I learned long ago during my literature studies in university: Always read a story in its context with other stories; a text will always get its real meaning in the grand scheme of things.
I can't read Moore's story without thinking about other stories on the NHS: the cutbacks, the erosion in pay, the health staff that have had to deal with the pandemic without PPE because the emergency stockpiles have been depleted.
Without the proper context, Moore's story is an inspiring tale on how one person does all he can to help his country during times of crisis.
But if you consider the wider context, we have a horror show in which the subjects of the kingdom have been left to their own devices by power-hungry rulers who now absolve themselves of responsibility for this situation by hiding behind the slouching posture of this old veteran, who has volunteered to walk in his empty backyard. And this tragedy, of a country that has preferred corporations and profits over people and society, is not just a British story.
As the pendulum swings back and forth between the conflicting voices, I cannot stop yearning for the stores, for the shopping, for the vacations, the restaurants, and the visits back home in Israel. The never-ending movement of flights, goods and people. But I remind myself that underneath this colorful bustling scene that I so yearn to reclaim, there is a dark bedrock and that my yearnings are like a rose-colored filter with hearts, whose beauty depends on disguise and blurriness.
And it is also, perhaps, important to stop missing the world that has so many flights because of their high degree of pollution that is destroying the earth; to stop thinking about Israel, because of the situation vis-a-vis the Palestinians; and to stop thinking about the old society, where we ignore the poor people's lack of access to eggs and flour. So I think to myself and put a blockage on these yearnings, and then every morning I wake up and the dam bursts anew, because of their strong force.
