Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 161
“What is the truth of being human? The lack of pretension, the acknowledgement of opaqueness, shortsightedness, inadequacy. But truth also demands risings striving for the goal is both with within and beyond us. The truth of being human is gratitude; its secret is appreciation.” (Who is Man pg 114)
Rabbi Heschel begins this ending paragraph on embarrassment with a startling question and response. I find it so interesting the phrasing of his question, he doesn’t ask ‘what is the truth of a human being’; he is reminding us that human being is a scientific category/classification much like animal, mammal, fish, etc, and categories do not get to the heart of the individual that makes us a category. Rather by stating the question in the way he does, Rabbi Heschel is calling to us and reminding us not to categorize our self nor another self into a generality. Yet, we continue to ignore this truth, we continue to ignore this teaching as we continue to classify and categorize ourselves and all selves into inane categories; rich/poor, white/black, male/female, Jew/Christian, Muslim/Catholic, smart/dumb, powerful/weak, controller/controlled, etc. Rabbi Heschel is demanding we see truth about our self and every other self in the world-we are individuals and we all must begin, continue, renew our being human and end our preoccupation of what category we are in, what classification we qualify for and our ways of being robotic instead of being human.
The word pretension comes from the Latin meaning ‘alleged’. We are able to, according to Rabbi Heschel, stop lying about ourselves, end our false words and actions, no longer falsify information to impress our self and/or another self. This is part of the truth of being human. What an order, given our current (and forever) state of human beings, we would have to shift our way of being seemingly completely, a 180 degree turn; impossible most people would say-after all, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Here is another example of Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance to me; we don’t have to do a 180, all we have to do is a 2% shift! At any given moment, 49% of our being wants to live in this lack of pretension, we desire to stop our mendacity, stop believing and being under the thumb of deceptive leaders, end our need to impress another and 51% of our being overrides our desire for truth. So, the shift is from 49% to 51%-a much more palatable and doable task.
We begin to make this shift through a practice of T’Shuvah, a daily inventory of what we did well, where we missed the mark, who was impacted, how they were impacted, what we learned and what is the plan forward to repair and change, enhance and reconnect. Doing this gives us the awareness of the what is, we take off the old glasses and old way of blame, denial, claim of innocence, explanations, clean-ups etc and begin to see our whole self through the eyes of one who wants to keep changing and growing, living one grain of sand better each day, connecting to God, to another human being, to nature; relating to our world with more kindness, love, truth, justice, and compassion each and every day.
Letting go of pretension, letting go of our allegations, letting go of our need to win begins with a daily accounting of our soul, a daily view of our actions with some perspective that we don’t always have in the moment. Hindsight is 20/20 and, according to the Jewish Tradition, we have the gift of T’Shuvah, which God put into the world before the world was created according to our sages, for this exact reason. God knows we are imperfect, God also knows we continue to live our false allegations about our self and another(s) selves, so God gave us the “most unnoticed miracle” T’Shuvah so we could always return, we can always change, we can always return to the “truth of being human”.
The recovery movement uses the wisdom of the Jewish Tradition through our large inventory (much like Yom Kippur) in the beginning of our journey in recovery and through our daily mini inventories (much like our confessions and nightly T’Shuvah) looking for both what we have done well and where we have missed the mark. We are constantly seeking progress on our road to living well and not perfection! In recovery, we engage in dropping our false allegations, our pretensions, our ‘don’t you know who I think I am’ attitude.
I know I am guilty of keeping some pretensions, the ones that give me hope and courage to move forward, the allegations that I am capable and important, etc. I also know that some of my pretensions have put people off and I exhibited an air of arrogance and disdain. I am remorseful for people who believe this as it was never my intention to ‘put on airs’ and I can see how my actions could lead someone to experience me in this way. I know I have made the 2% shift described above, I know that I engage being human more and more each and every day. I know that I fall short at times and I know I keep seeking progress. I also know people will see what they want to see and one’s pretension will color their vision of another to soothe themselves. I welcome each day as an opportunity to enlarge my vision and let go of another false pretense upon which I was living. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark