Today I am Born.

I was standing in the middle of a circle. Every way I turned, there were an infinite amount of paths to go down. There are so many options, so many oportunities, all of them good, all of them tempting, all of them leading me in different direction, and I can only walk one way at a time, one step at a time.

When I was at a friend's house for breakfast, and her friend said, "I'm going to do yam le yam tomorrow," (a trail that goes from the Mediterranean, across the width of Northern Israel, to the lake Kinneret in Tiberias), I said, "Okay, let's do it." And so the next day we were gathering seashells at the Mediterranean and setting our intentions for the journey. The truth is that every physical thing that happened, every thing that we experienced on a real, tangible level, was very clearly a reflection of a spiritual counterpart. The intention I had was that I would get in touch with nature, with myself, and with Hashem, and therefore find clarity about which Derech to chose so that, by the time we got to the Kinneret, and it would be time for me to return to the circle of infinite possibilities, I would know which way to go. The trip was the setting up of a compass in the middle of the circle-- a compass made of wildflowers, and when we were finally sleeping on the shore of lake Kinneret, three girls sleeping inside a circle of stones that we created as our circle of safety, there was a point where the wind was blowing so hard that it woke me. That was the wind that was blowing the hand of the compass. And when I woke up, the wild flower compass hand was pointing to Tzvat.

The Journey itself was a living torah, was very reflective of my life. When we are born, we come from the place of the infinite, the place of Hashem, of the everything, the oneness, the place of torah, the place of water, the womb, the sea... We start at a place of clarity, but as we grow up, as we live a little longer in this world, as we walk further down the path of life, further from our starting point of clarity and infinity, further from our mother's womb, from the sea, we experience obstacles and come to forks in the road. People we meet, social expectations, and every experience create distractions that can easily clouds our clarity. We started our journey at the sea, the infinite pool of water. As we journeyed, we found ourselves dealing with many obstacles, large and small, and in order to get to out destination, the Kinneret, the water, we had to first loose sight of the sea and find our way through land.

The goal of the journey was to go from the water, through land, and eventually end in a place of water and clarity. This journey is a great challenge in life. As we grow older, we must maintain sight of the sea and hold on to that point of clarity about who we are, even as we experience many distractions in life.

When we began, we were walking down a dry river bed. It was difficult because, despite the heat, there were so many rocks to step over. Obstacles. Also, our vision was obstructed by the walls of the river. But eventually we made it out, and when we were at a cross roads, and this happened every single time, we met someone who could guide us in the right direction, but they could only guide us so far. We walked from the river bed, to a banana plantation, to a mountain side, to a forest. At times the path was so difficult that, in order for us to move forward, we had to look at our feet in oder to get past the stones and thorns and bushes and ditches, but when we looked up and saw what we had just walked through, it was beautiful nature and the sea way in the distance. It reminded me of Rebbe Nachman's tale of the king's palace. The king is sitting in his room, and the prince is trying to find his father, but there are so many obstacles, mazes, corridors, empty doorways, etc. but when the prince finally finds the way through everything to his father's chamber, he looks back and only sees a magnificent garden.

Even though, on the one hand, we are in this world, and we really did have to sweat our way through the forest (with a pack on my back the made my hips turn bright red), step by step, in order to get to the sea at the other side, all of the obstacles were really just beautiful nature. I saw them as obstacles as I was walking over them, but that was just an illusion. The obstacles were really a garden, and I realize that the trail to clarity that I desire is really right in front of me. I just have to open my eyes and see the clear path instead of seeing the obstacles.

After we finished the yam le Yam trail, I went back to Tzvat and I was there for my hebrew birthday. Tiferet shebe Tiferet. That is the day I was born, but really, we are born again every day, every moment. Every breath is a gift.