“I pressed on, thinking that if I could just say what I wanted to say, here on a blank piece of paper, a miraculous change would be effected and the universe would be restored.”

I read these words in Paul Murray’s wonderful funny novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, and instantly recognized myself there (the title is the name of a race dog). Why do I keep on writing? People thank me for it, say it means a lot to them. I appreciate hearing that, but in the end, I write not to please people, not even to please myself. I write so that “the universe would be restored,” so that some sense or order manifests.

And sometimes, even that’s not true. I write to find an entry to the inaccessible, to chance on those accidental words that pinch the gut and hit the essence. And, of course, always come short. But sometimes I get closer than other times, and that’s when I want to rush off into the night, spread my arms wide to the stars, and yell: “Yes! Yes!”

Until the very next morning, when I feel I’ve failed again.

There’s the limit of words, the limits of skill and talent, the limits of age (I recognize this every time I do a New York Times crossword puzzle). At times, like today, when there’s no agenda that came up beforehand, no story or conversation that fed me thoughts and ideas, I feel like I’ve entered a boxing ring, ready to do battle with the blank page, to punch here and swipe there, draw some blood (probably from myself), and see what happens.

That’s probably not the healthiest of attitudes. Far better to take a walk, which I didn’t do today. What does help every day is a note by my computer, an important caution: “Your life is not important; your work does not matter.” Those words give me more and more relief and freedom as the days go by.

Earlier today, my brother in Jerusalem and I had a big argument about the war in the Middle East and I hung up on him. Really. Called back a short while later to apologize.

He told me that he often thinks that most of these arguments (and maybe most arguments generally) go all around the heart of things. That resonated for me. All those accusations—What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you listen? Where did you get such a crazy idea?—don’t get anywhere near the core of the matter, they just add more obfuscating layers.

Earlier he had said on the phone: “Nobody gives a damn about the Palestinians—not Hamas, not Hezbollah, not Iran—they just want Israel out of the Middle East and off the map.”

Some of that I wouldn’t argue with. Jihadi groups fight to the death for an idea, ready to sacrifice themselves and thousands of innocent people in the process. But I give a damn about the Palestinians, I thought to myself. I don’t care who else does or doesn’t. That’s the heart of the matter for me.

I can’t bear to see the long-lasting, slow annexation of the West Bank, I can’t bear to see people get dispossessed of their homes by others regardless of what competing Biblical or historical claim they have, I can’t bear to hear any more stories of families who had to flee or lost their homes and land that they inhabited for centuries. That’s as close as I can get to the heart of the matter right now.

My parents were ardent Zionists. Who could blame them, after all they endured during the Holocaust. That, and orthodox Judaism defined the young family. But something went terribly wrong with the political Zionist project, becoming a symbol for aggression, coercion, and exile.

How could a group of people who’d been exiled from their land for so long do this to others?

Whenever I get together with Lakota elders as well as younger generations, I know the past is not the past. White dispossession of Native Americans isn’t some historical fact that will be forgotten, it’s etched on their faces, it stares at you from their eyes, revealing so many wounds that at times you feel like you’re back at the Wounded Knee massacre site, looking down at the dead bodies.

It ravages our own collective memory regardless of whether our ancestors participated in that violence or not, regardless of whether our family was even in the US at the time. Because we live here, on the same land that absorbed their blood, breathing in the air, joining a society and culture that has it in its marrow. The same goes for slavery.

When I look at Palestine, I feel that I’m seeing this as it unfolds in real time, not in some abstract past. It’s never black and white, I am aware that Palestinian leaders have failed their own people both in leadership, integrity, and diplomacy. But that doesn’t change what has been occurring over the past 75 years, the shifts in the balance of power, and the domination and pain inflicted by one people over another.

You can add all kinds of appendices and layers, such as dislike of the role religions have played here, the militarism, the dogma inculcated in the very young, the values that arise out of preparing to fight a never-ending war even as people mouth peace peace peace without stop. So many layers to things. But the heart of the matter for me isn’t whether Joe Biden cares about the Palestinians, or Bibi, or Saudi Arabia’s MBS, or the rulers of Egypt or Syria or even Iran. I care. That’s it.