Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 209
“The question is not where is the event and what is the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.”(Who is Man pg. 115)
My father, z”l, when we said we were bored used to tell us to “play the Russian game, hit your head against the wall” as a joke. He said it in Yiddish which had a particular flair and humor to it. Yet, he was also telling us that the only bored people were people who were boring. Before Rabbi Heschel reminded me, my father taught me to stay present, appreciate the moment we are in and never see things the same way twice. Looking back, I realize both through his words and his deeds, my father stayed present almost all the time. Of course he gave into routines at times, he fell into the falsehood of familiarity in moments and he left them quickly. I believe his time in the service, his occupation as a salesman, his upbringing, his nature, and having a heart condition that was life-threatening at anytime all contributed to his belief that we have today, live for it, live in it. While planning for tomorrow, live this moment because one never knows if it could be our last. While my father died at age 42, he lived a full life in those 42 years and his wisdom carries on in his children, grandchildren and his great-grandchildren.
Most of us are unaware of how important this teaching is. We have become accustomed to the routine, whether it is our daily schedules, our indifference to the evils that are being perpetrated in our names, resting on our laurels, our entitlements, etc. to the detriment to our living well. People who see awe and beauty in sunrises and sunsets, in nature and art are still susceptible to falling into the “sham of routine” and the “falsehood of familiarity”. We listen to music as background noise rather than as moments of exhalation, we listen to ourselves repeat the same actions over and over again, we seek the safety of routine and familiarity in order to defend against the fear of the unknown. We pray the same prayers with the same melodies and don’t immerse ourselves in the new meaning, hope and love that today’s prayers give us. We study different texts and use the same explanations and commentaries we have used before forgetting to see how these texts and readings impact our being today as opposed to yesterday. Yet, we are better than this enticing and tolerable slavery!
To live this first sentence above takes great courage and constant awareness. We have to continually guard against profaning our lives by falling into the same routines in the same way. This is not to say we should not have routines, we must! Yet, we can’t sleepwalk through our days and our routines and have an authentic awareness of what is truly happening. Anti-semitism and racism are old stories that keep coming back whenever someone wants people to coalesce around hatred of a group. Stereotyping is another sure path to enslaving ourselves with routine and familiarity. Euphoric recall of “the good old days” is another sure way to fall into the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity” because they never were that good! We will always have moments of falling backwards, we are human after all, our challenge is to ensure that they are moments, not decades, not lifetimes.
We can do this by being grateful for the moment we are in, even if it isn’t so wonderful. We can never change things if we are stuck in misery, routine, familiarity because these ways of being blind us to any and all other possibilities. We get stuck in the routine of labeling, ourselves, another(s), situations, etc and this labeling prevents us from seeing the nuances, the newness, the possible solutions to the challenge of this moment and the beauty of the present. We have to constantly blink our eyes to change the myopic vision we are having, otherwise we easily and unconsciously fall back into the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity”. Seeing this moment as an event, experiencing the surprise of awareness and newness, realizing the current challenge in front of us and exploring new solutions gives us freedom and joy that is immeasurable.
In recovery, we follow the advice of Chuck Chamberlain and wear “A New Pair of Glasses” as his book is titled. One of the main attributes we recover is our ability to see things new, see things for what and who they are in this moment and not fall into the trap of “same old, same old” thinking and acting. We recover our ability to experience and respond to life’s sorrows and joys in the moment, we recover our ability to deal with the traumas we have experienced and leave them in the past, we recover our authenticity and our uniqueness.
My father’s wisdom is still something I use at times, I have to “hit my head against the wall” to get out of the “sham of routine, the falsehood of familiarity” that I fall into when I feel scared, hurt, angry, etc. I usually “hit my head” against the situation instead of the wall, trying to change things around me prior to seeing them new and finding the solution in this moment, not trying to get my way nor attempting to make things ‘like they were’. I begin each day with hope and newness and it is a challenge to keep this vision present throughout the day, when I hear news about different situations that I thought had been solved, etc. Today’s learning reminds me to keep it fresh, keep it new and keep it real, so I can live a little freer and better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark