THE KOSHER OYSTER MAGAZINE
O K AY By Benjamin Ezzes
You have been deceived.
you are human, and that humans make mistakes, and that you must rise above. Good parents for You have been presented with two contradictory generations have told their children that they assertions that form the core of who you are. will be loved no matter who they are, and they You have been told by your parents, your will be good at whatever they happen to do. You teachers, and even your friends, that you are must be proud of you, because you are okay. both okay, and not okay. Far from a moral judgement, you have been told you are both Then, you are told you are not okay. You are worthy and wonderful, and worthless and told that you must perpetually better yourself, nothing. At once, you are perfect and imperfect. that the constant state of your being is less than perfect. You are told that you must remember ‘Okay’ doesn't mean much of anything at all. It is a death and all the things that limit you, withhold placeholder – something we call ourselves and are your ego and flourish your ambition. You are told, called without seeking its meaning. The origins of like all good characters, that you are integrally ‘okay’ are trivial and obscure. ‘OK’ is an abbreviation and fatally flawed, and that the only way out is of the phrase 'Orl Korrect', as a homophone of 'All to have the ambition to emerge and succeed. Correct', and was the 1840 US presidential campaign slogan of Martin Van-Buren. The phrase took off, You are told that however noble and grand our and was abbreviated into OK by his nickname, achievements, that we face mortality. When Old Kinderhook. A made-up word, defined as a Roman commander was given a triumph to satisfactory, permissible, neither good mark their victory, it is said that a slave had to nor bad in any way. Something 'okay' is accompany them and whisper into their ear a in a middle stage of being, you could say. ‘memento mori’, to remind them of imminent and unavoidable death. Literature is filled from Now back to our fundamental dichotomy. its beginnings with characterisations of our lives as fleeting and worthless. Years after Solomon You are told that you are okay. You are told that writes Kohelet, singing of life as vain and vacuous, you are perfect as who you are, special and holy a monk in Germany writes for the Carmina Burana: and made separate. From the Jewish tradition, you ‘Similis sum folio, de quo ludunt venti’ – I am a leaf, inhabit a unique soul with a unique mission and a set tossed in play by the winds. Our Psalms speak to of skills to achieve them. Surely you are okay. Your the beauty in our fragility, likening us to flowers state of living is either satisfactory or resplendent. that bloom in the field – but, at the next instant, we are blown by the wind and fall away. It seems that At some point in school, someone tells you that you the perfect Jew is meant to be self-depreciative are perfect as you are. You are told that whatever and curb the ego that seeks to overwhelm us. effort you give is good, and that your struggles, all of them, are first-rate and right. You are told that There is a second kind of not okay, too. You are
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