Don't Call Me Mellow Yellow

What a difference a year makes. Around this time in 2005 I headed to Boston for business and pleasure for a few days. At that point in my life I was down, dejected, apathetic and probably at my all time spiritual low, doing things I never imagined i would actaully do.
B"H as I returned for a nearly identical trip this weekend none of those characteristics were present. That old rascal the Yetzer Hara was around several corners but I think I did a good job of avoiding him. I made every minyan this weekend at this University (a first for me there), did a good amount of learning (for me, again), said hamapil every night, didn't drink at all (which is easy for me- I hate alcohol), and didn't touch any women (which is hard for me- I like women). This time last year I, uh...well let's just say I was significantly worse in all areas...and maybe more. Truth be told my weekend was pretty uneventful, certainly nothing worth blogging about. Although there is one issue that's been on my mind the last few weeks that did in fact come up once or twice over the weekend: mellowing out.
Now allow me to explain what this means in the connotative Jewish sense. In most cases when a person comes back from a prolonged amount of time in Israel (usually in a Yeshiva setting) they come back more religious, sometimes wayyyy more religious. Now this tends to irk some people (we'll get back to this), and there's almost always someone saying "He/she'll mellow out in a few weeks". Now this can be taken two ways. The first can mean that they lose that glow that they carried over from the Holy Land, and simply revert to what they were like before they left, maybe with a bit more religious repetitious practices in their daily life, which often they will lose as well. The other interpretation can be a simple leveling off to an uninspired routine. I don't like either of these choices. I think it's important to find a good balance in ones life upon his/her return, but I'm just bothered by the subtle implications in peoples voices when I hear them say "mellow out". I can't remember hearing someone say that and not cringe a bit because I can see that they're bothered by the persons new religious persona. I wonder why? Maybe they prefer a more apathetic attitude towards religion? Maybe they liked the old person better, disliking the new nature of their friend/relative? Maybe it's that they see what they once were or what they could have been, and there's inner guilt?
I remember a semi-religious friend of mine teling me that he occasionally eats out dairy. I then tried to explain to him how cheese can be very problematic because of te renit, but he cut me off before I got going. He didn't want to know. He preferred to live in the shogeg. He was afraid of knowing more, and thus feeling more guilt. The less he understood the better; this seemed to be his take on religion. What does this mean? That deep down he beleived but that he didn't/couldn't be more religious for whatever reasons. Unfortunately he "mellowed out" before he even "flipped out".

I know I don't want to mellow out. I know what I need to do in order to maintain a stable, happy life. I "mellowed out" once and things didn't go so well. Now I'm not saying I want to get to a very right wing place, I still watch "24" and "Lost", but I want to maintain my daily minyan going, learning, hamapil saying, negiah, and overall attempts at growth. When I think of mellowing out in this regard I feel like it is an underhanded expression for curbing such growth.
I know a bunch of people who mellowed out and eventually went down horrible derechs. They were people who had that glow, who inspired and aspired, who had an overall affecting affability. Then they mellowed out, and eventually gave into apathy and temptation. Drugs, sex, alcohol, selfishness, anger and all sorts of self-destruction followed in varying degrees in various cases. They needed to replace that high Torah once gave them, and the sad thing is that I don't think they even knew it superficially. I look at these people and I just want to slap them across the face and say "You're better than this!!" This is not me be being judgmental, this is me looking at people I care about from from two directions and knowing without a doubt which one is better. I see what they could still be and it just frustrates me completely (thank G-d I have the blog to vent).
I guess I don't want things to be like they were the last time I came back from Israel. I mellowed out then, and if there's one motif in my life the last year it's been that I've been learning from all my mistakes, so I don't want to mellow out now. I don't want to go down now that I'm home, but up. I'm back in real life and this is where the challenge is, and I can't go down the easy road.