Not in peasant years

Life! Don't talk to me about life.

— Marvin

I attended a really awesome talk by a visiting post-doc this morning. In which he talked about squirrels, college students, pregnant women whose brains should be drunk but are not, hibernation and bloodletting.

During the introduction, he was talking about the areas of the brain that lose their functionality under the influence of alcohol. Cortex, he said, usually goes first. Medulla, the area responsible for control of breathing and heartbeat, goes last. Which is why 99% of students on college campuses can get drunk and still be alive the next morning, when they wake up in a gutter. Which is why a person can go under the anesthesia and still breathe (and have his heart beat). So, cortical neurons, he said, are a bit like George Costanza. While medullar neurons are more like Clint Eastwood.

While talking about the cortical neurons, he said: "You don't really need your cortex, as far as your life is concerned. [Nucleus tractus solitarius] you can also survive without, although not for long. Without medulla you cannot survive at all."

It's the first sentence that caught my attention. It reminded me of the story I read about a chossid of Alter Rebbe, whom the Rebbe blessed for parnasa. The chossid refused to accept the blessing (parnasah means responsibility to spend all that money in a holy way). Then Alter Rebbe blessed him for long years. The chossid grudgingly agreed to the blessing, adding: "But not peasant years". Meaning, not the years filled with meaningless life. (In American terms, it can sound something like: "But not gas station attendant years.")

There are many possible definitions of life. According to some, it is "a state that distinguishes organisms from non-living objects or dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism and reproduction". I.e., survival. According to others, it is survival plus pleasures. According to fewer still, it is survival with pleasures and self-fulfillment.

From the point of view of Judaism, life is eternity. Infinity. Unlimitedness. Absoluteness. Surviving, growing and reproducing, deriving pleasure and self-fulfillment, having knowledge and self-awareness (and awareness of the world around one) does not yet make one alive. In order to be alive, one has to be connected to eternity. In order for even a smallest act to be a part of life — real life — it must connect the person and the world around him to the infinity. To Hashem.

That is why Torah calls someone who lives a meaningless life, life not connected to Eibeshter, dead. And the person can be frum (generally speaking) — but, when he does something that has nothing to do with his mission in this world, something that is "just 'cause", in that moment he is dead.