I studied Jewish history in a religious high school, an easy student who didn’t have to work hard except in mathematics and the sciences. I was given a history exam consisting of two essay questions, to write about the terrible Roman Empire and what it had done to Israel, specifically leading to exile for the Jewish inhabitants. I knew the story I was supposed to repeat, but I’d read more widely.

I gave the usual regurgitated answer to the first, but having always disliked how dogma demands you shut your brain down, in response to the second I wrote that the Roman Empire had a well-known policy of exiling the inhabitants of any rebellious country, often levelling entire cities to the ground. I questioned the logic behind the three Israeli rebellions against a behemoth like Rome that had vanquished more powerful nations.

I also wrote that I did not share the awe Jews had of the people besieged in Masada for three years, who committed mass suicide rather than submit to Roman soldiers. Men slaughtered wives and children. Was anybody given a choice, I asked, especially the women and children?

I got a grade of 50. Full credit for answering the first question; no credit at all for how I answered the second, with the comment: Terrible! But that was not the biggest thing I lost when I refused to subscribe to myths and stories. In a way, I lost my family, whom I depended on and whom I loved.

Isn’t that why we stick with historical myths that have been corrected over the years (even as they continue to be celebrated with songs and stories)? We choose to belong rather than to tell the truth. And who can blame us? We are conditioned in the innermost layers of our DNA to never, ever let go of the family or the clan. Never do anything that endangers your belonging; instead, accept your role in a bigger whole that will keep you safe and protected, that loves you no matter what.

And yes, my family loved me no matter what. Conflicts happened, but my parents loved their children, my siblings loved (and continue to love) me, too. I went to great lengths not to push things. I lived far away, had no wish to persuade or show off. When I visited, I kept my mouth shut, especially in those times when I worked in the West Bank during the week and spent weekends with my mother in Jerusalem. I became silent, mute. All in order to belong.

Who’s not afraid of being locked out of home and becoming a minority of one? Who doesn’t prefer to hold on to illusions, honor the myths and the stories we’re told, usually in the name of love? But I follow a spiritual tradition that has little patience for delusions and instead, tells you to wake up. As Gabor Mate often says: “Would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned?” And he continues: “When you get disillusioned, you’re getting liberated, but the folks who liked you don’t like you anymore.” They’re kind and courteous towards their crazy 75-year-old Buddhist relative, but there’s a schism. I no longer fully belong; we all know that.

But since a young age, I preferred honesty to belonging. It’s a painful choice.

I’m coming to grips with how many of our institutions betray the ideals they bray about, only I’m insulting donkeys when I use that verb because donkeys are better creatures than our leaders. If there’s something I’m grateful to Donald Trump for, it’s for breaking more and more of my illusions. Let other liberals describe their hate of him, I think that his ascendance reflects how so many of our institutions have broken down long ago, under both Republican and Democrat governance, in service to money, power, and inequality. Why are the biggest, richest universities making a deal with him costing hundreds of millions of dollars? Or our media, or Silicon Valley?

By the same token, I get hate emails from people who’d like to see Bibi Netanyahu dead. But like Trump, Bibi is only the latest, severest symptom of an expansionist policy that Israel set out on since 1967, implemented under every single government they had. All you had to do was drive through the new tunnels and beautiful roads built in the West Bank to see how it was being carved out. But who wants to really look, when it might cost you your connection to myths and legacies thousands of years old? To your family?

So, the two wizards create their dramatics and bellicose declarations, but look behind the curtain and what do you see? Our society. Ourselves.

It’s during these days that I retreat into myself. Not into apathy or passivity, they’re not in my nature, but into a deep faith that even in my lowest times, life acts through me and others in inconceivable ways. Bernie believed that life moves all the time towards greater and greater consciousness of interdependence. This goes on not necessarily through my conscious decisions or study, not even through my meditation practice, though those certainly have their role. He knew the dance goes on, even when we feel we’re stuck in place.