The Californian fires got me thinking about how much worth people place on material possessions, and how quickly it can all be lost through circumstances beyond our control. It’s so difficult and takes so long to build up our material wealth, and yet the cruelties of life have shown us that in a mere moment it can all be taken away.

I certainly learned that lesson when I lost my house and found myself utterly homeless for the first time in my life. The feeling that you suddenly have no place on earth anymore to call home is simply indescribable. It was surreal for me, and the shock of that experience changed me forever. These days I no longer place any value in owning a home, and I continue to wittle down my possessions in order to make myself more mobile. Nowadays I place my value in my independence and the freedom of not being tied down to one location. I want to be able to move any where on a dime’s notice, and as a result I’ve been making it a rule of mine to ensure I don’t own more than what I can fit into my own car. Fortunately though I own a SUV.

For the longest time I’ve romanticized the idea of living a nomadic lifestyle, and whenever disaster strikes somewhere in the U.S., I liked the idea that such a lifestyle meant I could just hop in my car and go to lend whatever helping hand I could. I hated to watch these kinds of events unfold, (such as the fires happening now), while I was stuck on the sidelines, tied down to a dead end job, suffering from poor health and with bills that never seem to stop coming. I haven’t entirely proved myself useless though, since I’m using my income to help provide for relatives in need, but there was a part of me that always held on to the notion that I was meant to do more. Not merely token gestures of charity, but the capacity to truly help those in need in ways I’m either incapable or have been unwilling to do now.

To me this felt like the real way to live. It would feel right. It would feel JUST.

There’s a Hebrew word that describes my feelings here, down to a T. The word is Tzedakah, and while it is translated to mean “charity” in English, in truth the meaning is much deeper than that. According to Judaism 101:

“Tzedakah” is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call “charity” in English: giving aid, assistance and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. However, the nature of tzedakah is very different from the idea of charity. The word “charity” suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. The word “tzedakah” is derived from the Hebrew root Tzadei-Dalet-Qof, meaning righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.

When I first started this blog I was under the belief that I would eventually attend law school so I could help find justice for those in need as an attorney, and when those plans fell through, I felt like my life was basically over, and as a result I sunk even further in my depression. Before the thought of law school I once had a lifelong dream of establishing a career in law enforcement, but after 7 years of working in one of the most corrupt law enforcement agencies I’ve ever witnessed in all of creation, that dream was pretty much derailed as well.

Law enforcement didn’t pan out, the legal profession didn’t pan out, so where was I supposed to find justice?

Then I thought, maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. It’s a given that God never sees things the way we do, and maybe there’s huge part of a picture in all this that I’ve just haven’t been able to see yet. Maybe the kind of justice I’m looking for can’t be found in a courtroom, or from wearing a badge. Instead of letting myself completely unravel and succumbing to my depression, it might be time to consider that there really is a life being prepared for me that will end up being better than anything I’ve ever imagined, and the kind of justice I seek and find in that life will prove to be more profound and far more rewarding. I just need to believe it again.

I still have a long way to go before I can finally consider myself ready for such a life, but it’s time I broke this cycle of despair and began my own personal basic training program.