Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 32
“If life is holy, as we believe it is, then self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral task is not how to disregard one’s own self but how to discover and be attentive to another self.”(Man is Not Alone pg.141)
Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us in a language not all of us can hear, not because the words are unintelligible, not because there is any hidden or secret meaning to them, rather because we are deaf to them! Like our willful blindness to see what truly and authentically is, we also practice willful deafness. We purposely have not heard nor do we can to hear now this teaching of Rabbi Heschel for doing so would change our responses to life, to the interests of another(s), to ensuring the freedoms of our Declaration of Independence, the four freedoms FDR articulated, the freedoms of our Holy Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, the myriad of Eastern philosphies/religions. As long as we stay willfully deaf to the cries of pain, sorrow, joy, laughter of ‘those people’, we can continue on with the lie we tell ourselves that we are engaging in “self-regard”; all the while engaging in self-centeredness.
This is not a progressive rant nor is it a conservative bashing. This is a truth that I hear from deep inside my soul, I experience Rabbi Heschel speaking to me at this moment. There is a tension between conservative and progressive and our duty, according to Rabbi Heschel, is to live in the tension. Just as the sentences above, speak to us of the tension of taking care of oneself and one’s family and taking care of, being attentive to the interests and the presence of another self. We have become so attuned to our own needs and how someone else can fill our needs, we have come to not see another human being for their Divine Image, for their separateness from us, for their humanity. We have come to regard another self as a tool for our gratification, an excuse for our ‘missing the marks’, the cause of all troubles we have and we cause. We engage in the vice described above, often.
Every time we speak of ‘those people/you people’ we have “complete or partial disregard” for another human being. Every time we spread a lie to someone because it makes us seem smarter, bigger, gains us money, prestige, power, etc we have “complete or partial disregard” for another self. When we flex our muscles just because we/to exert power and get what we can rather than seeing how our strength can imbue another self with hope, purpose, a path to joy; we are in “complete or partial disregard” for another human. We see our leaders on both sides of the aisle engaging in this “complete or partial” disregard by not truly seeing each other as another self, seeing the followers of our opponents as ‘despicable, seeing the people with whom we agree as pawns and tools to raise money from (I get an obscene amount of political fundraising solicitations), etc.
In our personal relationships, when we are in transactional relationships, we can still have regard for another self, yet we have become deaf to the calls and cries of the people we transact ‘business’ with. The use of the word ‘business’, here, is any interaction we have with another human being. We see the regard for another self in companies who have decided to ensure a minimum living wage for workers, we see it in the amount of volunteering that happens across the world, we see it in the scientific research and discoveries that lead to vaccines and cures/remissions for the diseases that are trying to kill us, we see it in the work of organizations and business that help and interact with people regardless of their ability to pay. Transactional relationships do not mean a lack of self-regard nor a lack of regard for another self.
This lack of regard, complete and/or partial, happens when we engage in willful blindness and willful deafness. When we hear someone with our ears attuned only to what they can do for us, we are in “complete or partial regard” for that self/those selves. When we see another human being and hear another human being as merely some object that we can step on to feel good about our self, some object we can step on to achieve our goals, some object we can step on to ‘get even’ for all the hurts we have suffered, some object we can step on, laugh at, deny their right to be human and treated humanely, we are in “complete or partial regard” for another human being and for ourselves. More on this tomorrow.
In recovery, “having had a spiritual awakening… we carry the message to alcoholics who still suffer”, from the 12th step of AA. We are recovering a way of having regard for our selves and regard for another self/selves. We know we are not in this thing called living alone and, in recovery, we learn and practice service for the sake of both parties, I receive more than I give and my giving allows another to receive.
I am looking backward and forward, seeing how the best of times have been when I have served another’s interests and found myself by doing this. Sure I have had “complete or partial disregard” for another at times, however they were few and far between. I have been misunderstood, mis-attuned, in some of the times I have seemed to have disregard. Every human life is important, mine and yours I commit to continue to display this. More tomorrow on this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark