Questioning my own expectations

From a young age, my family filled my mind with stories about Israel. Some from the Bible, some from personal experience, and eventually some from history, but all those stories were running like a steady stream underneath all my thoughts, feeding and nurturing my dreams and excitement when I was chosen to go on Israel Trek. I was very excited, and more importantly, I genuinely thought I knew what I was going to see.

And as one can expect, it was so very different from everything I expected. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher that I thought would be similar to St. Peter’s Basilica was an overcrowded and spiritual, confusing and beautiful place. The Jordan River, which I thought would be wide and deep, seemed so much smaller in comparison. The Sea of Galilee, which I imagined as a small lake, was so massive in comparison. I didn’t know how to feel because I’d internalized images for no reason. These images did nothing to counter my personal faith. And yet I felt some sort of internal confusion. It seems that in the process of believing certain things as a Catholic, I’d tied up those images and places with the stories and beliefs themselves. Perhaps in the way the Renaissance painters did, except I hadn’t realized how much I’d believed my own mental paintings.

So why am I sharing this story? Because I don’t think it was just about these self-constructed images alone. Some days after I returned from Israel, I thought of Edward Said and Orientalism. I’d read excerpts in several classes throughout college and even written a paper about it, but it took going to Israel to begin to question myself. No one wants to think they’ve fallen victim to orientalist tropes, but as it fills our movies, books, and music, it takes an active effort to combat it. The fact that on my first day I could only describe Jerusalem as “reminiscent of ’The Raiders of the Lost Ark’” was troubling to me because it wasn’t quite the appropriate way to describe it. Jerusalem was so much richer and interesting than a movie could depict it. Thus, beyond my ideas of biblical sites, there was the fact that I had perhaps gone to Israel with a Hollywood-esque image in mind. This creates the “othering” of these places and people to fit into the mold created by the American culture such that I couldn’t even think of another way to describe Jerusalem that didn’t include a movie. Naturally, all the places I visited are different from home, and yet not as different as I would have thought. There were no characters in Israel, only people. I know this now, but landing at Ben Gurion I only had the stories and Hollywood, and together, these created expectations about what places should look like.

However, these reflections were very productive in helping me see a problem I, and likely many others, have. Expectations, so tied up with internalized tropes and self-constructed images, detract from our ability to live in the moment and connect with others on a deeper level. I think the point at which I let go of my expectations is when I learned the most in Israel, as in life, because I took in information like a blank slate to be able to see the most beautiful aspects about places and people stand out. I always thought I’d come back from Israel a slightly different person, but I didn’t know how much richer my life could be from small lessons learned while there.