"Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression. Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, a demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me?
What we encounter is not only flowers and stars, mountains and walls. Over and above all things is a sublime expectation, a waiting for. With every child born a new expectation enters the world.
This is the most important experience in the life of every human being: something is asked of me. Every human being has had a moment in which he sensed a mysterious waiting for him. Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand."
Abraham Joshua Heschel
I would add that fear and trembling, in the kierkegaardian sense of an existential anxiety, is also found in sensing that demand, more precisely in the gap between that demand and where we usually live our lives: in ignorance of what our role is in fulfilling the demand and in disconnection from what prompts it. Concerning this the Netivot Shalom writes that "...it is said that his own personal world "stands", on the three things that strengthen a Jew's stand so that he can fulfill his task and purpose in any situation and through this rectify that which pertains to the root of his soul." (http://atailtolions.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-netivot-shalom-on-root-of-ones-soul.html)
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