It’s amazing how resilient human beings are. I was reminded of this yesterday at a truly spectacular Bar Mitzvah service. Things that should and could break us, don’t. Events and losses are balanced by courage and love, and the need for us, as humans, to keep going forward.

The love in the synagogue was palpable. It was like air, floating around. Sometimes you don’t even know how much love there is for you, but if you gathered it collectively, you could float on it, you could move through, you could be ok.

The rabbi said that one of the stripes on the Bar Mitzvah boy’s prayer shawl would be a stripe of sadness, but that it was important to remember that sad stripes lives next to stripes of joy and happiness.

This is what life is. Sad stripes and happy stripes; love that’s strong enough to pull you through even the tightest spots, on out through to the sun.  This is why we are unbreakable. This is how we keep going when we think we can’t.