Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 201
“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)
Banal comes from the French meaning ‘a call to arms’ and the German meaning ‘common to all’. We have come to use the word to mean ‘unoriginal, obvious, boring’. Triteness comes from the Latin meaning ‘to rub’ and we use the word to mean ‘overused and of little import as well as lacking originality and/or freshness’. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is the warning that all of us need to heed. We have come to accept boring, obvious, stale, etc because we are on a treadmill of work, keeping up with someone else, comparing and competing with society’s metrics. This is at the root of our discontent and unease which leads many to hatred, looking for a ‘bad guy’, making allies and enemies and joining cults, groups, etc that preach salvation through authoritarian leaders and repetitive ways of being. Even religion has become stale through because many spiritual leaders want behaviorism rather than originality, creed and dogma over awakenings and connection, etc. We are in a state of strangulation and corrosion without any awareness of this truth and we are constantly being told, as the Wizard of Oz said, “don’t pay any attention to that man behind the curtain”.
Herein lies the issue of today, yesterday and tomorrow; are we willing to go against the grain, are we willing to take the lonely road of the Prophet, the fearful road of the Israelites when they left Egypt, the courageous road of the exiles in Babylon and return to our authentic self, our authentic mission, our unique originality in the face of scorn, rejection and aloneness? Throughout our history, it seems as if this is the road of the few, the brave and the connected. What makes the liberation from Egypt so amazing, to me in light of the wisdom above, is that people left! While I have always wondered why only 20% left, according to a Midrash, I am now amazed that 20% left! This has given me a new appreciation for the courage and bravery of the people who do T’Shuvah, who return after their mistakes and errors to a way of decency and flourish in love, justice, kindness and truth. I am in awe of the people who fight this tendency to be banal and trite, to be strangled and strangle others in their search for their own significance of being.
‘Same shit, different day’ is a common response from people internally and externally. So many people feel trapped and stifled by the labor of living, the safety of repetitiveness and knowing what to expect and they also are afraid to break out of this safe space. Hannah Arendt wrote of the “banality of evil’ and while she was talking about Adolf Eichmann, I believe every time we succumb to the ‘rubbing away’ of our originality, every experience we see as the same as one before, every day we see ourselves and/or another as ‘little import’ we are engaging in the “banality of evil”. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us to stop diminishing our sense of significance, stop slamming the door on our spiritual connection, stop crushing our spirit of adventure, stop detouring ourselves from our unique purpose and passion.
We can do this, we can say NO to the lie of ‘same shit, different day’ by waking up grateful and energized to find the new, let go of the sadness, hurt and fears from yesterday, not be engaged in trying to repeat the same victories from yesterday. We can do this by saying NO to the spirit crushing demand of society to ‘measure up’ to their expectations and instead say YES to the call of our own soul. Saying YES to our inner life’s needs and gifts, following through with a deep sense of connection to them, to the people in our lives, being grateful for what we have and wanting what we have rather than lamenting what we don’t is key to ending our boringness, our triteness, our banality, our participation in the evil that is rampant in our world. We have the technology to do this, we have the inner strength to do this, we have the path to do this, we just have to have the courage, the maturity and the commitment. More on this tomorrow!
In recovery, we have been beaten into submission so many times by the banality and triteness of our former ways of living. Recovery is our rebellion against these ways of unoriginality and boring, of being rubbed to the bone by fear, comparisons, the lies we have told ourselves, etc. In recovery, we are aware of a power greater than ourselves and the spirit, the force field of this power can and will lift us out of the doldrums of addictive thinking. As my wife, Harriet Rossetto, says: “You don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery.”
I am embarrassed at how many times I have succumbed to the triteness and banality of life and forgot my own sense of significant beingness. As I wrote yesterday, engaging in trivial matters is a way I have succumbed and I am committing to leave these matters in their place and not indulge in them. I am also aware of the banality of my allowing and promoting at times a caricature of my self, diminishing the significance of my being and my gifts/talents. I am aware of the times I allowed my indignation and anger, while often appropriate, become out of proper measure and giving another person power over me, which led to my diminishing my significance. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark