I have no analysis to offer but only a story told by Lawrence Kushner and his comments following (from Eyes Remade for Wonder)…
A light snow was falling and the streets were crowded with people. It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of my rabbinic students, Shifra Penzias, told me her great-aunt, Sussie, had been riding a city bus home from work when SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed, but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner.
My student’s great-aunt watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why.
“I don’t have the papers you do. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.”
The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. “You stupid bitch,” he roared. “I can’t stand being near you!”
The SS men asked what all the yelling was about.
“Damn her,” the man shouted angrily. “My wife has forgotten her papers again! I’m so fed up. She always does this!”
The soldiers laughed and moved on.
My student said that her great-aunt never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.
You are going about your business when you stumble onto something that has your name on it. Or, to be more accurate, a task with your name on it finds you. It’s execution requires inconvenience, self-sacrifice, even risk. You step forward and encounter your destiny. This does not mean you must do everything that lands on your doorstep, or that you should assume every risk or make every self-sacrifice. But it does mean that you must tell yourself the truth about where you have been placed and why.
You do not exercise your freedom by doing what you want. Self-indulgence is not an exercise of freedom. But when you accept the task that destiny seems to have set before you, you become free. Perhaps the only exercise of real freedom comes from doing what you were meant to do all along.
If everything is connected to everything else, then everyone is ultimately responsible for everything. We can blame nothing on anyone else. The more we comprehend our mutual interdependence, the more we fathom the implications of our most trivial acts. We find ourselves within a luminous organism of sacred responsibility.
Even on a bus in Munich.
There is what we know...and then what we don't know. Those on a quest to "know" have missed the bus. But those on a quest to obey have a guide for catching an easy ride.
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