Tonight young people are hanging out along the Tisza, as in the old days, playing their boomtubes, and restaurants, cinemas, concert halls, and other places are open. I went to the Tisza Mozi to see the film Spirál (the Hungarian/Romanian film directed by Cecília Felméri and starring Diána Magdolna Kiss, Bogdan Dumitrache, and Alexandra Borbély. I found the film beautiful and strange, a dance of life and death. The actors were outstanding, particularly Dumitrache, and the cinematography dreamy and colorful. The music, composed by Ádám Balázs, made me stay past the end of the credits. I would go see it again.

I was the only person watching this particular screening. It had been a long time since a film was shown in that room. There was a little technical problem at the beginning, but the Tisza Mozi staff worked to resolve it quickly, and apologized to me after the film. No apology was needed. I was so happy to see it and to be back in the world.

Upon leaving, I walked through the terrace, where I ran into a colleague and said hello. The terrace was filled with people. It brought back memories of Marcell Bajnai’s concert back in August. Speaking of which, there’s a great video of one of the songs from that concert, “Kopog a szív.”

To be admitted indoors to the places that reopened today, you have to show proof of immunity or vaccination. This is controversial for numerous reasons (some people don’t want a vaccine, some have been but haven’t received their card yet, some want a vaccine but haven’t been able to get an appointment, some want a particular vaccine that hasn’t been made available to them, etc.). I hope the rules will soon relax so that these places will be open to all. With any necessary precautions, but without distinctions. Then we can celebrate with full heart.

I love it when an open weekend comes along, with time for thinking, resting, and various things that require long focus. The long focus: a Shakespeare video I am working on, a presentation I am giving on Monday (already prepared, but worthy of a run-through), the upcoming issue of Folyosó, and an essay. There are other things too, such as a new story, but I won’t get to them this weekend. The restful things: reading, listening to music, playing music, preparing next Shabbat’s Torah portion, and taking a bike ride or walk.

Another thing I like about this “alone time” is the chance to do and think things without being classified as this or that. Recently someone remarked to me, by email, “You’re such an intellectual! Such a scholar!” I took this as a compliment but was disconcerted, as I don’t put myself in these categories. Yes, I have an intellectual life, but it revolves mostly around literature, which is intellectual, artistic, linguistic, and visceral, all at once. As for being a scholar, no, I don’t think so. Much depends on definitions, but often when people say, “you’re a scholar,” they’re saying, “you speak a language that’s too far removed from the everyday for anyone else to care about it.” I have had book proposals turned down by agents, article pitches turned down by young assistant editors, because they deemed them “too scholarly,” which to me sounds like an excuse.

So it’s great to have some time just to do things on my own terms, without being called “scholarly” or anything else. People sometimes take confort in classifying others. It helps them make sense of the world. So-and-so is a scholar, so-and-so is a creative type, so-and-so is a lazy bum. Sometimes the categories help; sometimes they’re true; sometimes the people being categorized actually want them. But I often find that for me, they’re beside the point; they don’t quite fit, and I’m glad to take them off at the end of a long day, or at any time for that matter.

Not that it’s good to spend all one’s free time alone—and I do not, by any stretch. I have obligations, activities, meetings and am happy about that. Not to mention teaching, which, even online, involves contact with others, day after day, and which brings lots of joy. The stretches of unscheduled time, when they happen, offset and complement the schedule, classes, conversations, deadlines.

This is not just about me by any means. Sympathy and empathy, as well as reading and listening, require resisting the temptation to classify others or their words too hastily. Many others besides me wish to be taken on their own terms, or at least on terms that aren’t limiting and dismissive. Go ahead, categorize if you must, but see beyond and into the category too. A rectangle may be a rectangle (and probably is), but if you look into it, you can see an infinity of shapes.

I took this picture looking into the window of the Galéria restaurant on Szapáry utca. You can see the reflection of the synagogue (now a gallery) across the street.

The other day, in my post “Are Hungarians Especially Sad?” I told about how a former student (from Varga, now at university) had asked me what I thought of a Quora comment that Hungarians are the saddest people in Europe. He also wrote (I am quoting this with his permission) that “the true plague for us is this permanent inability to feel contented, without envy and avarice.” In other words, in his view, life in Hungary is not so terrible, relative to life in general, nor is everyone bitter and depressed, but there are many young people who think they could have a better life elsewhere. This is the plague: the thought that other people, other countries have it better, and if I could just whisk myself over into their position, I would be fine.

A certain kind of discontent is necessary for life and for the things we want to do well. I am continually revising my writing, whether for sound, language, meaning, accuracy, or something else. Musicians play and play, even at the highest levels, to come closer to what they imagine and hear. Athletes train and train, and compete and compete. But in all those cases, you are working on something in yourself; you are the locus of improvement.

The dangerous kind of discontent occurs when we want something “over there”: something someone else has, something in another country, something belonging to a particular social group. Surely there are people we admire and would like to emulate—but when we aggressively try to get what they have, or resent them for having it, we make a mess of our lives.

Is this a particularly Hungarian tendency? I doubt it. But it may play out in a particular way in Hungary, especially among young people who tire of the government’s isolationist rhetoric and long to see the world. It’s easy, in that position, to imagine that life in the U.S., Denmark, the Netherlands would be not only more comfortable, but more exciting too, with more of an opening to the world, more opportunity, more of a future. And for some individuals, this might be somewhat true. But beyond that, it’s human error all over again.

First of all, it involves “comparing your insides to other people’s outsides” (as a wise person said to me long ago). New York looks like an incredible, bustling city bursting with talent and all walks of life. And that it is. But if you live there, as I did for fifteen years, you don’t necessarily want to take it in. The work days and commutes are long, and at the end of it all you might want to go home and listen to music in your room. That is, if you have a place that’s quiet enough for that. When I was living in Brooklyn, there were block parties in my neighborhood that boomed so loud that my chair and desk shook. And so many people in NYC live in cramped, crowded spaces and still have to pay exorbitant rent. Don’t get me wrong: the city lives up to its reputation. But living there is different from seeing it from afar.

Second, when you covet something to extremes (when you go beyond mild envy toward action), you start to become ugly inside. You think of others not in terms of who they are, but in terms of what they have. You find ways to put them down in your mind, to level them with you or even bring them below you. I see more of this in the U.S. than in Hungary, but maybe that just comes with familiarity. I imagine it happens all over the world.

But back to the original quote from my former student: if this kind of envy or dissatisfaction is “the true plague,” then it goes beyond the individual. It spreads from person to person; it becomes a worldview. That’s the worst aspect of it; by indulging in that kind of discontent, you affect others too. You show them, through your attitude and actions, that simple joys in life are to be scorned, that the only valid happiness is “over there,” wherever “there” may be. People start believing that they are unworthy if they don’t have a house, or make a certain amount of money, or have a beautiful boyfriend or girlfriend, or look lovely and skinny themselves.

I believe that this is universal but multifarious; different cultures exhibit it in different ways. Many Hungarians I have met attach importance to material attainments. Some do not, but overall it seems to be assumed that you’re doing well if you have a house and car. (This exists in the U.S. too, but there are many countertendencies.) On the other hand, people here are not enraptured, generally, with hype and fame; quality comes first. In the U.S., hype is a way of life. Kids learn to promote themselves before they learn to make something worth promoting.

How do you go about combating this plague? First, see it for what it is, in yourself and others, and then turn the attention to things that matter: doing things well, treating others decently, contributing something to the world. But this requires a lot of strength and vigilance. It’s not for nothing that at least five of the Ten Commandments (the number depends on how you interpret them) forbid envy or its consequences; envy is all around us and can tear a person, a relationship, a society apart.

Sometimes happiness does exist “over there.” Sometimes it does make sense to move to another city, country, apartment, or whatever the case may be. It isn’t all delusion, which makes the matter more complicated. But the delusion is always close at hand, and oh so tempting because of the shortcuts it dangles before us: not only shortcuts to wealth or success, but an exit from ourselves and those around us.

Art credit: James Ward, Ignorance, Envy and Jealousy (oil on canvas, 1837).

Often, when we say, “I wish you warmth and light,” we mean it partly figuratively, but right now the literal comes first. The storms and outages across the U.S.—from Oregon to Texas to Tennessee to New York—have left millions without heat, electricity, or safe drinking water. I hope that this emergency ends soon and that there will be much better protection against future ones.

Here in Hungary, the weather is mild again (9 degrees Celsius in Szolnok at the moment); the coldest it is supposed to get in the coming week is zero (tonight). The snow has melted, and the Tisza is swollen.

This looks like it will be a quiet weekend at home, a rare one without any pressing deadlines around the corner, a chance to catch up with things, read, rest, play cello, get ready for next week, and go out on the bike. I am enjoying the beautiful poncho that my sister crocheted for me. And grateful for the warmth, light, and water.