Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 190
“Indebtedness is given with our very being. It is not derived from conceptions; it lives in us as an awareness before it is conceptualized or clarified in content. It means having a task, being called.” (Who Is Man pg. 108)
Continuing to immerse ourselves in these three sentences is an exhausting and infusing endeavor. Immersing ourselves in them causes us to see our own indebtedness, of course, and to see how we have run away from it. When we truly look at the ways, subtle and not so subtle, we have run from our “awareness before it is conceptualized” we can see why we have felt so tired, rundown, depressed, anxious, etc throughout our living. We are afraid of the debt, we are sure the holder of the debt is going to ask us to do things we don’t want to do and we are going to be stuck. So, like Jonah, we run away, we deny the awareness in us and we seek refuge in a myriad of ways, fake love, work, vices, devices, etc.
The ways and time we spend running away from our awareness exhausts us because it is wasted energy and it is unproductive energy. While many people have created wonderful works when they were running away, they became jaded, entitled, and tired without acknowledging that they were paying off their indebtedness, they were answering the call and performing the task they were created for. We have all seen the people who are ‘too cool for school’ because of their ‘successes’ and how they forget the people who helped them along the way, they take most, if not all, the credit for their achievements and believe they should be lauded, adored, etc. This is exhausting for these individuals and it is certainly exhausting for the people who serve/work for them.
Some professional athletes, on the other hand, point to the sky as an acknowledgement that their success is not only theirs, they have had much help for people and from the Ineffable One. This gesture, while seemingly religious, actually, to me, shows an awareness of our debt, an awareness of our call and both thank you and I’m doing the best I can right now response to the call/task, awareness of my debt by using my talents/gifts in the best way I can in this moment. Awareness and acknowledgement do not mean fulfillment and completion, rather they promote progress rather than perfection. If the Ineffable One wanted us to perform each and every task with perfection, the Ineffable One would have sent an Angel, not a human. Part of our awareness of our indebtedness is an awareness that we will probably never repay it in full nor are we expected to! Our task is to keep paying on it with our deeds, answering the call and the task in our own unique manner, fulfilling the divine need we were created for and treating one another with kindness, justice, mercy, truth and love.
I want to acknowledge some people who have used their success to help people succeed. Bill and Melinda Gates, Lauren Powell Jobs, MacKenzie Scott, David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and many other celebrities and business people who have used their wealth to set up foundations to give money to people in need and/or organizations who provide direct service to those in need. A pair of people whom I have the honor and pleasure of knowing, Andre Young and Jimmy Iovine have created a school at USC to promote the integration of business, art, and technology with an emphasis on underserved young people, and are creating a school within the LAUSD system to promote learning for young people who have been turned off by the ‘traditional’ educational system. Dr. Dre and Jimmy have continued to use their success to serve other people, as they have for many years, whether it is an artist that needs guidance, a young person with an idea who is asking questions, a friend in need, young people they have never and may never meet, these two spirits are responding to the awareness of their indebtedness with a rousing Here I am!
In recovery, we clear out the noise in our heads that bends us towards entitlement and listen more carefully for the voice telling us how to repay our debt. We know we are indebted because we were so lost for so long and to be found is truly “Amazing Grace”! We are recovering, in many ways, from being deaf to the call, being recalcitrant in fulfilling our task and in hiding from our awareness of our debt.
I realize how much more, in this next chapter, I have to do, how much interest has accumulated on my indebtedness to God, to people in general, to my friends and family. I am always aware “I owe” as my friend and teacher, Glenn Goss, z”l, used to say and I am grateful for and to the people who study Rabbi Heschel with me and help me learn more and more. I am grateful and indebted to all my teachers over the years, especially the people I learned with as colleagues and as Rabbi for the insights and depth of knowledge you give me. I am committed to continue to hear the new and maybe different tasks that I am being called to, I see how I got stuck in one task and thought it was forever, being a little willfully blind to the myriad of ways I am being called to repay the debt and fulfill the divine need I was created for. Remembering that the Ineffable One gives me the breath of life, the oxygen to continue breathing, helps me fulfill the call and repay my debt with ‘I get to’ rather than ‘I have to’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark