As most of Israel had already made its way to a friend or family member's house for the first night of the Jewish new year, a peaceful calm settled upon Tel Aviv. The roads were almost empty and I was riding shotgun in a car driven by my roommate to catch a family dinner that we were right on time for.
"אין לי סבלנות"-"ugh I have no patience" my roommate announced as she kicked the accelerator hard and sped toward the row of cars and their red lights not even 20 meters ahead of us, before sternly applying the brakes to a full stop. As we stopped, she pulled out another cigarette and lit it - her 20th of the day probably.
A few days back I was walking along a street close to my apartment, approaching the stoplight at the end of that street. A bus breezed by me with it's engine noticibly at high RPMs before slamming on its brakes in order to complete the right hand turn that it had to make without killing anyone aboard. Is that really necessary I wondered to myself, thinking about the bus drivers in Colorado, who with their cool and collected driving could lull me into doing something that usually alludes me: sleeping in a moving vehicle. How much gas do you waste and how many transmissions per bus-life do you go though with that insane driving? I started to think as I approached that intersection why was it necessary to honk at someone who fails to move within one milisecond after a light turns green. Or why it was necessary that there is a brief yellow light before the green light in Israel.
There is a palpable, thumb-twiddling, muscle-twitching, head-scratching impatience woven into the fabric of the Israeli national psyche that I never understood until recently. It is a national phenomenon and is a defining characteristic of the Israeli mentality: live in the moment. If something isn't available right now, you will go get that thing that you want without much regard for the immediate or distant future.
Tunnel vision => That thing you want
After listening to many Israelis offer an explanation of why they find it acceptable to build in the West Bank, I finally understand why and can decode their apathetic reasoning. After analyzing some of the political moves by the Israeli government I finally understand why there were made: solving a problem in the short term is a more attractive option than the non-indulgence involved in longer term solutions. The latter could be considered a means of existential defense but, you get my point.
Blah blah blah. It's 2:39 in the morning and I'm wrecked. Good night.
