Fleeting Life and Eternal Life

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai comes out of the cave with a great and uncompromising truth, but then he meets a simple person, on the eve of Shabbat, running with myrtle branches in his hands. A Jew within life. And in that moment a deep change takes place. Rashbi understands that holiness is not only a peak detached from the world, but a force that acts within life itself. That the mundane is not merely an interruption, but a place where holiness is revealed – at times precisely in the small, simple, unimpressive actions. The running of that old man is a revelation of a soul connected to something eternal, even within passing time. Rashbi does not give up the height from which he sees the world, but he learns to see how that very height acts within reality, how even fleeting life carries within it eternal life. And when this becomes clear, his mind is set at ease.