Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 273
“The self-suspicious man shrinks from the light. He is often afraid to think as he feels, afraid to admit what he believes, afraid to love what he admires. Going astray, he blames others for his failures and becomes more evasive, smooth-tongued, and deceitful. Living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men.”(God in Search of Man pg. 389)
The last sentence above is, unfortunately, the path many people take, now and throughout history. The fear of FOMO, the fear of one another, has overtaken human beings for the millennia. So many of us live from these fears and act out accordingly. Rather than live in “both/and” most people live in “either/or”. In the latter, we are in win/lose mode, my way or the highway thinking, success/failure beliefs. In the former, we realize that both success and failure, my way and your way, are part of being human and winning or losing doesn’t define us, in fact we never ‘lose’ because we are always learning. In “both/and” we seek to communicate, relate, make connections with people from our souls in order to learn, grow and not need to be right.
Yet, “either/or” thinking is the paradigm most people live at. In this paradigm, “living in fear, he thinks that ambush is the normal dwelling place of all men”, is true, and people in this mode of being describe the world as a dangerous place, they believe ‘they are out to get me’ and join with like-minded people to fight against “those people”. Hence the popularity of Donald Trump, the going along with Republican legislatures and Governors who relish and embrace authoritarianism. People living in this fear, living in “self-suspicion”, living into “suspect thy neighbor”, are hypersensitive to any and all perceived slights. They look for validation of their suspicions, their conspiracy theories and believe the lies of “pizzagate”, the lies that all democrats are pedophiles, the 2020 election was stolen, ‘big brother is listening in’, ‘the deep state is out to get them’, etc. They join with other conspiracy theorists, they will follow Q, they will believe and clap at the lies Trump, et al promote because they have “fear of missing out” syndrome as well. Living in “either/or” thinking makes ambushing everyone else a smart, survival technique, a way of being that is logical (in a twisted way), and a “societal norm”. Rather than promote ideas and solutions, our political parties are more interested in trashing, ambushing their opponents! While they proclaim that “God is on their side”, in reality, we are witnessing the desecration of God’s Name, of God’s will, a bastardization of the Bibles, Koran, etc.
It is not just in the political realm we witness the bloodbath “either/or” thinking and acting brings, we witness it in business, in sports, in our personal lives. Business engage in espionage against their competitors because they have to be #1 or they are a failure. The advertising, the promises, the small print disclaimers, the Super Bowl ads, all try to make (fill in the blank) “the best” and the “only true/right choice” in a myriad of industries. In our families, we witness the pushing and shoving to be #1 child, #1 in the class, #1 in sports, etc. We are so interested in making our children ‘the best’, there are parents who do their homework, who call the schools when their child doesn’t get a ‘good enough’ grade (an A or A+) to have the principals change the grade and discipline the teacher! Have you gone to a kids sporting event lately and heard parents berating the coach, the umpire/ref for their kids ‘failures’? In “either/or” thinking, people do not see progress, they see winners and losers, and if their kid is ‘a loser’ then this reflects on the entire family! In the workplace, people take credit for another’s work, they step on one another so they can ‘climb to the top’. Being a mensch, a decent human being, is laughed at by people living in the “either/or” paradigm. Because of their own fears, their own inadequacies, people living in “either/or” truly believe they have to ambush, abuse, cheat, lie, steal to ‘get ahead’ and, why not, everyone else does it!
In recovery, we are recovering the truth that Spirituality and religion have always known-live in the “both/and” because our “either/or” thinking has led to self-deception, to self-doubt, to self-harm, to self-deprecation, etc. Our eyes become wide-open to the destruction and pain we caused ourselves and another(s) by living in “either/or”, ‘get them before they get me’ thinking. We choose to embrace the paradoxes of life, we choose to open our minds to the ideas and wisdom of another(s), be they contemporaries and ancient sages, philosophers and spiritual guides/leaders, mentors and parents/siblings. Letting go of the “ambush” mentality, letting go of suspicions allows us to breath in the truth of living, it allows us to deal with pain, loss, not being #1, realizing how we ‘miss the mark’ in ways that promote our growth in being human. It is not easy and it is simple, the more I engage in “both/and”, the more responsible, joyous and free I am. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark