I sometimes wish I could be a carefree goy instead of a neurotic Jew

I’m currently living in Poland, and my wife (who’s Polish and not Jewish) often jokes that I’m the “most Jewish Jew” she’s ever met. She says I’m miserable, paranoid, hypochondriac, anxious, always finding something to worry about. Even when everything is fine, I’ll invent a new problem. Noise can drive me insane. Germs, nutrition, air quality, sleep quality, my kids’ mental health… I obsess about all of it.

She sometimes prays our kids won’t inherit the “Jewish personality,” though honestly… it looks like at least one of them already has.

And sometimes I fantasize about being someone completely different.
A fat, clumsy goy.
Someone who eats sausage and drinks beer at midnight and then passes out in front of the TV with no consequences. Someone who doesn’t obsess over ingredients or EMF exposure or screen time or developmental milestones.

My in-laws are like that. They don’t worry about anything. They leave raw meat on the counter for hours before cooking it. They eat processed food, candy, whatever. They watch dumb TV all day, fall asleep in front of it, let the kids scream under strangers’ windows and drink from the toilet. They’re happy. Or at least… they seem like it.

And then I saw that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode where Larry imagines his life if he had been raised as a gentile.
Season 5, Episode 10 — “The End.”

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Larry the Gentile – YouTube

And yeah… he looks happy. So happy it actually stung.

Sometimes I wish I had that in me… to not care so much. To not constantly scan for danger. To eat without guilt. To parent without fear. To go a day without five hypothetical disasters playing out in my head.

But I also know this part of me… the overthinking, the worrying, the analyzing, it comes from caring. It’s tied up in love and responsibility. It’s also my way of feeling safe.

Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m trapped between cultures, between mindsets. My wife’s family lives fully in the moment. I live in my head.

I guess I just needed to say it out loud.
I wish I were just a little bit more like Bohdan from the village: sausage, TV, ignorance and bliss.