Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 250
“To have joy in an object is to respect its individuality. This is implied in the very idea of delighting in it for its own sake. To have joy in what is real is to subordinate individual opinion wholeheartedly to the truth of the matter; to have joy in what is beautiful is to trust to the inspiration of beauty and not to the contrivance of artifice. The interests of the object dictate at each step the line of advance.(W. R. Boyce Gibson, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. VIII, p. 152a) (God in Search of Man pg 385-86)
Gibson’s definition of joy is a very important distinction from happiness/pleasure. Society has mixed up these two emotions/traits/states of being to the point of not having any distinction between them. “To have joy in an object is to respect its individuality” is an outrageous statement for most people. We see joy as something for ourselves, something that makes us feel good, yet Gibson is teaching us to have joy is to respect the object, to delight in it “for its own sake”, not for ours! What a radical idea! Yet, it is the only way we can perpetuate the joy of life, no matter what is happening in the moment.
We are commanded to “Choose Life”, seeing this command through the lens of the teaching above give us the opportunity to respect the individuality of our particular living as well as the particular living of every human being. Viewing life as a joy allows us to delight in being alive no matter what is happening, good or not good. This calls for us to let go of our self-centered actions, to let go of our need to be happy, let go of our need to respect only our individuality.
This teaching is calling on us to experience life as the object “to respect”, life as the object to delight in “for its own sake”, not just our own life, rather life itself. This changes our outlook, our perspective, it prevents us from staying neutral, it calls us to be engaged in our own lives and in life itself. We are witnesses to and participants in a way of being that is very small by this definition, it is a way of being that seeks pleasure in the moment, rather than the joy of living. We are witnesses to and participants in ‘low-grade misery’ precisely because we seek pleasure rather than live in joy, we seek our own individuality rather than “have joy in life is to respect its individuality”. We are suffering from this ‘low-grade misery’ and forcing everyone around us to suffer as well. We are not even respecting the individuality of our souls because we are seeking pleasure and happiness as defined by societal norms rather than by the our own inner compass, our spirit, our souls. We are being bludgeoned by people who gain power in order to be pleased by their cruelty, by their whims, by their pleasure-seeking mendacity. Life itself should be the object of our joy, choosing life is to respect the individuality of each person remembering that we are all created in the Image of the Divine, we all are “divine reminders” we all fulfill a “divine need” so we all need to be individuals who come together for a common purpose, service and joy.
Delighting in life “for its own sake” changes our paradigm of being, I believe. Just the fact that we are alive, that there is life, gives us delight, gives us joy, gives us energy to move forward. No longer do we have to ‘feel good’ to be in joy, no longer do we have to ‘be number 1’, ‘feel fulfilled’ to be in joy, joy becomes a state of being, a way of being rather than a feeling as I am understanding Gibson and Rabbi Heschel today. What a freeing experience, this is radical amazement in action, I believe, joy of living no longer is dependent on how we feel, what we accomplish, how much money, power, prestige, how well we can rule over another, etc. The joy of living comes from delighting in being alive! No longer can we deny the freedoms, the rights, the individuality of another, no longer can we ‘rule with an iron fist’, no longer can we unilaterally impose our desires, our need for pleasure on another, no longer can we see anyone else as anything but an individual, a human being, an equal. Choose Life becomes a call to joy, a call to delight, a call to respect oneself and the selves of everyone else.
Recovery is joy. We speak about happy, joyous and free, in our meetings, in our text, we live into the joy of living each and every day, we crave being of service rather than being served, we crave loving rather than being loved, we truly live into St. Francis’ prayer and we practice the Serenity Prayer each day. We have left the “bondage of self” and joined with people to live in joy, to delight in life, to respect the individuality of everyone. In my recovery, I have been living more and more in the paradigm of joy, I have been able to walk through death, betrayal, my own errors and the arrows, lies, and bludgeoning by some because of experiencing life as the object of my joy, not making joy dependent on what happens in my life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark