Last week, I was speaking with an elderly friend and I mentioned a pursuit she "used to" engage in. Her response was morose, along the lines of, "Sure, I used to. There are many things I used to do. I have to get used to 'used to'."
I felt terrible, of course; remembering what you can no longer do is a bitter experience, particularly as the "used to"s accumulate. I wanted to point out new activities she could become "used to" - authors she could read, musicians she could listen to, places she could go walking, and so on - but I was afraid of being trite. She knows perfectly well that there are new things she could do. And suggesting these new "used to"s could sound like naively and insensitively suggesting that these new pursuits could offset her losses. So I said nothing, basically, and just listened.
Listening was my go-to option when I was in the pulpit. I was younger than most of my congregants, and far less experienced in life, and so I wasn't confident in offering ideas. I buried people 3-4 times my age. I met with people about their issues in raising teenagers, before I had children of my own. Drugs and alcohol, marital issues, and so on - I found listening far more useful than offering advice that had the potential to be way off.
Listening has many merits of its own: It allows people comfortable space to talk through their issues, it validates the speaker, it educates the listener. Mishlei 12:25 says, "Worry in the heart lowers it (ישחנה)," and in a play on words we read the clause, "One who has worry in the heart should speak of it (ישיחנה)," because of these benefits. But on its most basic level, listening is useful because it's "first, do no harm" safe.
I wish I could have said something to help my "used to" friend feel better, but I guess I'm okay settling for safe.
Showing posts with label Life in the Rabbinate: Counselor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life in the Rabbinate: Counselor. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Sending suicidal people form letters
[I wrote this four years ago, in a different forum, in the week before Tisha b'Av. My life is different now; I no longer serve as a shul rabbi. Nonetheless, it still resonates with me, and particularly because just the other day a shul rabbi mentioned to me exactly the point I identified below - that a shul rabbi runs a great risk of burnout if he identifies too closely with the people he counsels, but that we do it anyway.]
I’ve been unusually depressed lately - beyond the normal dips and bottoms in my normal state of harried/anxious/depressed/exuberant.
Some of it is the Nine Days.
Some of it is miserable anticipation of Haftarat Chazon coming up this Shabbos; I never get through that without bawling like a baby.
Some of it is from lack of music during the Three Weeks of mourning.
And some of it is the rising tide of illness and bereavement I’ve been dealing with, in one of those morbid swings of the pendulum that happen from time to time.
I’ve been reading segments of Alan Alda’s autobiographical “Never have your dog stuffed,” and I just found two paragraphs that sum up the problem perfectly. [Note: I cannot recommend the book, because parts of it are too vulgar to be halachically permissible. Frankly, the early part is wandering and poorly put together. On the other hand, some of the later parts are great. And, it is Alan Alda, after all.]
On page 168 he describes becoming famous as a result of MASH:
I began receiving letters from people on the verge of suicide, asking me for help - help they felt for some reason I was qualified to give them. I wanted to answer these lettes before the people carried out their acts of despair, but after I struggled with what I should say in answer to the first letter I received, I realized I had taken a week. That was too long. At a certain point, even the right words might be useless. I couldn’t take that long with every letter.
Finally, I wrote a draft of a note that could be tailored to anyone who wrote me in desperation, and I checked it with a friend who was a psychoanalyst. In each letter, I included the number of the local suicide prevention clinic. I tried to make the letter seem personal and genuine, hoping they wouldn’t choose a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but each time I sent out one of these letters, and there were a number of them, I felt strange. This is what getting famous does to you, I though. You wind up sending suicidal people form letters.
That’s a big problem in the rabbinate. Members, non-members, locals and people from far away, they come to you looking for answers, for comfort, for a listening ear, and you can’t afford to send them form letters. They need, they deserve, more than that. They deserve someone who will listen.
Which brings me to an earlier paragraph in Alda’s book, page 160-161, discussing his evolution as an actor in doing MASH:
When I started out as an actor, I thought, Here’s what I have to say; how shall I say it? On MASH, I began to understand that what I do in the scene is not as important as what happens between me and the other person. And listening it what lets it happen. It’s almost always the other person who causes you to say what you say next. You don’t have to figure out how you’ll say it. You have to listen so simply, so innocently, that the other person brings about a change in you that makes you say it and informs the way you say it…
Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues. Like so much of what I learned in the theater, this turned out to be how life works, too.
To be a good listener means to be transformed: To sit and listen and absorb the other person’s experiences and point of view, and let them become your own, so that you can respond with a real sense of the other person. You can’t have an answer until you know what the other person is saying, until you’ve heard him out and absorbed her view.
I’m experienced enough to know the danger this poses during an intense period like the one I’m enduring. I know the warning signs and the pitfalls, and the need to step back and take a deep breath. But I’m a rabbi. I’m the rabbi. They come to me.
This is one of the reasons I don’t blog much about the “big issues” facing the Jewish community. All community is local; it’s the woman with cancer, the man with suicidal urges, the couple having marital difficulties. What Olmert will and won’t do, whether Lubavitch messianists are going Christian or not, asking if the Gedolim are given too much credence - I don’t have the patience, let alone the time, to play pundit on that these days. I’m trying too hard to avoid sending suicidal people form letters.
I’ve been unusually depressed lately - beyond the normal dips and bottoms in my normal state of harried/anxious/depressed/exuberant.
Some of it is the Nine Days.
Some of it is miserable anticipation of Haftarat Chazon coming up this Shabbos; I never get through that without bawling like a baby.
Some of it is from lack of music during the Three Weeks of mourning.
And some of it is the rising tide of illness and bereavement I’ve been dealing with, in one of those morbid swings of the pendulum that happen from time to time.
I’ve been reading segments of Alan Alda’s autobiographical “Never have your dog stuffed,” and I just found two paragraphs that sum up the problem perfectly. [Note: I cannot recommend the book, because parts of it are too vulgar to be halachically permissible. Frankly, the early part is wandering and poorly put together. On the other hand, some of the later parts are great. And, it is Alan Alda, after all.]
On page 168 he describes becoming famous as a result of MASH:
I began receiving letters from people on the verge of suicide, asking me for help - help they felt for some reason I was qualified to give them. I wanted to answer these lettes before the people carried out their acts of despair, but after I struggled with what I should say in answer to the first letter I received, I realized I had taken a week. That was too long. At a certain point, even the right words might be useless. I couldn’t take that long with every letter.
Finally, I wrote a draft of a note that could be tailored to anyone who wrote me in desperation, and I checked it with a friend who was a psychoanalyst. In each letter, I included the number of the local suicide prevention clinic. I tried to make the letter seem personal and genuine, hoping they wouldn’t choose a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but each time I sent out one of these letters, and there were a number of them, I felt strange. This is what getting famous does to you, I though. You wind up sending suicidal people form letters.
That’s a big problem in the rabbinate. Members, non-members, locals and people from far away, they come to you looking for answers, for comfort, for a listening ear, and you can’t afford to send them form letters. They need, they deserve, more than that. They deserve someone who will listen.
Which brings me to an earlier paragraph in Alda’s book, page 160-161, discussing his evolution as an actor in doing MASH:
When I started out as an actor, I thought, Here’s what I have to say; how shall I say it? On MASH, I began to understand that what I do in the scene is not as important as what happens between me and the other person. And listening it what lets it happen. It’s almost always the other person who causes you to say what you say next. You don’t have to figure out how you’ll say it. You have to listen so simply, so innocently, that the other person brings about a change in you that makes you say it and informs the way you say it…
Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues. Like so much of what I learned in the theater, this turned out to be how life works, too.
To be a good listener means to be transformed: To sit and listen and absorb the other person’s experiences and point of view, and let them become your own, so that you can respond with a real sense of the other person. You can’t have an answer until you know what the other person is saying, until you’ve heard him out and absorbed her view.
I’m experienced enough to know the danger this poses during an intense period like the one I’m enduring. I know the warning signs and the pitfalls, and the need to step back and take a deep breath. But I’m a rabbi. I’m the rabbi. They come to me.
This is one of the reasons I don’t blog much about the “big issues” facing the Jewish community. All community is local; it’s the woman with cancer, the man with suicidal urges, the couple having marital difficulties. What Olmert will and won’t do, whether Lubavitch messianists are going Christian or not, asking if the Gedolim are given too much credence - I don’t have the patience, let alone the time, to play pundit on that these days. I’m trying too hard to avoid sending suicidal people form letters.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Job of a Hospital Chaplain
I fell into hospital chaplaincy quite by accident; it’s not something I ever wanted to do, as a dedicated profession.
My fall took place during my first or second year in the rabbinate. A retired rabbi living in the area volunteered to visit Jewish patients at the local Veterans’ Hospital, but he was going south for the winter, and he asked me to fill in for him.
I learned a lot in this role, because it involved a lot of visiting people I had never met (and who could barely hear me – a lot of them were WWII and Korean War vets), and because it involved the first serious ecumenical work I had ever done.
I learned then, and this idea has been reinforced in the years since, that a hospital chaplain plays many roles, including:
• Officiant – Even though we don’t have last rites (separate from viduy), people consider tehillim a ritual, and benefit from actually seeing the rabbi recite it… even if they personally do not ‘believe in’ prayer.
• Case manager – Patients who don’t have relatives to oversee their cases are often given sub-par care. It’s harsh to say that, but it’s true. A chaplain can ask questions, and even by his presence demonstrate that someone is watching.
• Hope manager – For an aged man or woman who has neither children nor siblings nor friends ambulatory enough to visit, the chaplain represents someone who is interested in his well-being.
• Host for visiting relatives, orienting them to the hospital facility and, as needed, to the community at large.
• Comedian – Well, I had a captive audience. And I didn’t say I was any good at it.
One role I played only rarely was Spiritual Advisor.
I have mentioned elsewhere that the chaplains at that VA felt they were not respected, that the doctors saw them as insignificant and even out-of-place in the hospital. One countermeasure they implemented was a chart (to be stored with the medical chart!) listing dates and times of visits, and key spiritual milestones and benchmarks. Is the patient comfortable with his projected outcome? Is the patient angry, or calm? Have you discussed spiritual issues, life after death, etc?
For me, the idea of imposing this Spiritual Advisor role upon the patient, and especially benchmarking it, seemed foolish then, and it still seems foolish to me today. Perhaps this is different in other religions, but I never saw my visiting-rabbi role as including spiritual exploration. In part that’s because those patients could barely hear me, and were often unconscious. And in part it’s because they were largely people who had not seen fit to study religion or seek out a rabbi beforehand, and it seemed awkward to introduce it for them now. If they sought to discuss religion, I was ready, but I certainly was not going to position myself as Spiritual Advisor, come to investigate their Judaism.
On the other hand, perhaps I was and am too timid. Maybe those patients were just waiting for
me to ask them to put on tefillin. Who can know?
In any case, I never went back to it; I am happy to visit anyone and everyone, but not as an official chaplain.
My fall took place during my first or second year in the rabbinate. A retired rabbi living in the area volunteered to visit Jewish patients at the local Veterans’ Hospital, but he was going south for the winter, and he asked me to fill in for him.
I learned a lot in this role, because it involved a lot of visiting people I had never met (and who could barely hear me – a lot of them were WWII and Korean War vets), and because it involved the first serious ecumenical work I had ever done.
I learned then, and this idea has been reinforced in the years since, that a hospital chaplain plays many roles, including:
• Officiant – Even though we don’t have last rites (separate from viduy), people consider tehillim a ritual, and benefit from actually seeing the rabbi recite it… even if they personally do not ‘believe in’ prayer.
• Case manager – Patients who don’t have relatives to oversee their cases are often given sub-par care. It’s harsh to say that, but it’s true. A chaplain can ask questions, and even by his presence demonstrate that someone is watching.
• Hope manager – For an aged man or woman who has neither children nor siblings nor friends ambulatory enough to visit, the chaplain represents someone who is interested in his well-being.
• Host for visiting relatives, orienting them to the hospital facility and, as needed, to the community at large.
• Comedian – Well, I had a captive audience. And I didn’t say I was any good at it.
One role I played only rarely was Spiritual Advisor.
I have mentioned elsewhere that the chaplains at that VA felt they were not respected, that the doctors saw them as insignificant and even out-of-place in the hospital. One countermeasure they implemented was a chart (to be stored with the medical chart!) listing dates and times of visits, and key spiritual milestones and benchmarks. Is the patient comfortable with his projected outcome? Is the patient angry, or calm? Have you discussed spiritual issues, life after death, etc?
For me, the idea of imposing this Spiritual Advisor role upon the patient, and especially benchmarking it, seemed foolish then, and it still seems foolish to me today. Perhaps this is different in other religions, but I never saw my visiting-rabbi role as including spiritual exploration. In part that’s because those patients could barely hear me, and were often unconscious. And in part it’s because they were largely people who had not seen fit to study religion or seek out a rabbi beforehand, and it seemed awkward to introduce it for them now. If they sought to discuss religion, I was ready, but I certainly was not going to position myself as Spiritual Advisor, come to investigate their Judaism.
On the other hand, perhaps I was and am too timid. Maybe those patients were just waiting for
me to ask them to put on tefillin. Who can know?
In any case, I never went back to it; I am happy to visit anyone and everyone, but not as an official chaplain.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The making of a Bernard Madoff: One possible scenario
I visit Jewish inmates at local prisons; I’m glad to say there aren’t too many, but there are some.
(Side note: I’ll never forget a lawyer who walked up to me in the meeting area, while I was waiting for my inmate to be brought down, and said, “I didn’t know Jews go to jail.” He’s lucky I was too surprised to slug him.)
I was once visiting an embezzler who had been a salesman, and had stolen his customers’ fees to support his gambling habit. He explained to me how he had fallen into doing it: In the beginning, he had been able to sign up enough new business, and win enough at the tables, to pay back the company before anything was noticed. Other salesmen and even managers knew about it, but they let it go because he was such a good salesman.
And every month that he made it through reinforced the idea that he could get away with it - in fact, that nothing was wrong.
Things started to go bad because his gambling debt climbed past his customers’ fees, but by the time he realized he couldn’t catch up, it was too late - he was in for too much, and so he needed to come up with successively more criminal strategies to cover up the theft. (Yes, this is what we call aveirah goreret aveirah - one sin drags in another.)
He could never bring himself to stop believing that the next day would bring salvation, that the next gamble would win back everything he had lost, and so he never came clean - until he was arrested.
I wouldn’t know Bernard Madoff from anyone, and every person has his own motivations and complexities, but I can easily envision his scheme starting in much the same way, even without a gambling habit: Investments one quarter don’t meet the expected returns, and he worries about his record and his appeal for new clients - so he takes some of the new money coming in, and uses it to inflate the portfolios of existing clients. It's more about reputation than building wealth.
Madoff develops a great reputation for successful investment, everyone wants in, so he needs to keep the reputation up, needs to provide great returns. It’s easy, just take the incoming money and spread it among other portfolios, all the while pretending that the new portfolios are also doing well. Works like a charm, so long as more new money is coming in than you need to spread around the old accounts.
And every quarter that he makes it through reinforces the idea that he can get away with it - in fact, that nothing is wrong.
Once things turn, though, you’re toast, and it doesn’t take long - maybe one quarter, maybe two - before you’re in too deep to ever climb out. Until, like my inmate friend, you are arrested.
I don’t see a “moral of the story” from the investors’ loss - they all invested in a fund with a great reputation, which had been entirely okayed by the SEC. You can't say, "They should have known it was too good to be true" - that's nonsense, they could not have known.
But I do see a moral in Madoff’s story: Don’t start down an unethical path, because, sooner, or later, you end up on the front page for all the wrong reasons, and you’ll bring down a whole lot of innocent people with you.
(Side note: I’ll never forget a lawyer who walked up to me in the meeting area, while I was waiting for my inmate to be brought down, and said, “I didn’t know Jews go to jail.” He’s lucky I was too surprised to slug him.)
I was once visiting an embezzler who had been a salesman, and had stolen his customers’ fees to support his gambling habit. He explained to me how he had fallen into doing it: In the beginning, he had been able to sign up enough new business, and win enough at the tables, to pay back the company before anything was noticed. Other salesmen and even managers knew about it, but they let it go because he was such a good salesman.
And every month that he made it through reinforced the idea that he could get away with it - in fact, that nothing was wrong.
Things started to go bad because his gambling debt climbed past his customers’ fees, but by the time he realized he couldn’t catch up, it was too late - he was in for too much, and so he needed to come up with successively more criminal strategies to cover up the theft. (Yes, this is what we call aveirah goreret aveirah - one sin drags in another.)
He could never bring himself to stop believing that the next day would bring salvation, that the next gamble would win back everything he had lost, and so he never came clean - until he was arrested.
I wouldn’t know Bernard Madoff from anyone, and every person has his own motivations and complexities, but I can easily envision his scheme starting in much the same way, even without a gambling habit: Investments one quarter don’t meet the expected returns, and he worries about his record and his appeal for new clients - so he takes some of the new money coming in, and uses it to inflate the portfolios of existing clients. It's more about reputation than building wealth.
Madoff develops a great reputation for successful investment, everyone wants in, so he needs to keep the reputation up, needs to provide great returns. It’s easy, just take the incoming money and spread it among other portfolios, all the while pretending that the new portfolios are also doing well. Works like a charm, so long as more new money is coming in than you need to spread around the old accounts.
And every quarter that he makes it through reinforces the idea that he can get away with it - in fact, that nothing is wrong.
Once things turn, though, you’re toast, and it doesn’t take long - maybe one quarter, maybe two - before you’re in too deep to ever climb out. Until, like my inmate friend, you are arrested.
I don’t see a “moral of the story” from the investors’ loss - they all invested in a fund with a great reputation, which had been entirely okayed by the SEC. You can't say, "They should have known it was too good to be true" - that's nonsense, they could not have known.
But I do see a moral in Madoff’s story: Don’t start down an unethical path, because, sooner, or later, you end up on the front page for all the wrong reasons, and you’ll bring down a whole lot of innocent people with you.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Trembling Before G-d, seven years later
It was February 2002 when I was invited by our local Jewish Community Center’s “Jewish and Israeli Film Festival” to speak after a showing of the then-new film, Trembling Before G-d. (For those who don’t know, Trembling is a documentary interviewing homosexual Jews who feel a closeness to Judaism and who are trying, in various ways, to live halachic lives... or who have given up because of their alienation.)
I was invited to speak tonight at a screening of the film, and I must admit that I didn’t expect to say anything different from what I said that first time, almost seven years ago:
*I am in awe of people whose faith in Judaism is so strong that they commit themselves to this struggle;
*Our shuls and communities are obligated to do everything we can to welcome them as Jews and as human beings, without sugar-coating the Torah’s view on homosexuality;
*Yes, even if homosexual desire is genetic/hard-wired it can still be prohibited;
*Recognize that the film does have an agenda, and portrays reality through a lens; it cuts off the interviewed rabbis, and doesn't give us any real insight into the relatives, particularly those accused of shunning, at all.
I didn’t even enter the room to watch the film; I stayed in the next room, preparing a gemara shiur while semi-listening to the familiar voices of gay men and women telling their stories.
But as I was semi-listening, I did have a thought crystallize for me. I knew it on some level before, I’ve certainly applied it before, but I never really understood it as clearly as I did tonight: That this issue of homosexuality in the Orthodox community is really much more a matter of sociology and community than it is a matter of religion.
The voices of outraged people, pained people, isolated people, sad people, resigned people, emancipated people, are not unique to this situation. This particular crisis is more intense and painful and intractable than others, but, fundamentally, their voices sound just like the voices of people disinherited by family and community for a whole host of reasons - religion, economics, personality, whatever.
I’ve heard these voices in my office, on the telephone, at kiddush at shul, from homosexual and heterosexual, from teenager and senior citizen, from Jew and non-Jew; these are the voices of people who are dealing with years, lifetimes, of self-doubt and emotional pain, because they have been told by people they love and respect that they are defective.
Therefore: The comfort we can offer people by telling them, “We don’t think you’re evil,” and “Of course we’re your friends,” matters a great deal, even if we cannot provide the heter (leniency) so many seek. Far more important than validation as a gay Jew is validation as a Jew and human being altogether.
I am convinced that the damage wrought by telling a vulnerable adolescent he/she is immoral, evil or deviant is far worse than allowing him/her to remain gay.
To my mind, most of the voices in that film and in life are not really asking, “Tell me you think it’s all right.” Rather, for most of them it’s about, “Tell me you think I’m all right.”
Which is something, I think, that we in the Torah-observant community can and must do more often.
[Haveil Havalim, hosted by the illustrious Jack, is here!]
I was invited to speak tonight at a screening of the film, and I must admit that I didn’t expect to say anything different from what I said that first time, almost seven years ago:
*I am in awe of people whose faith in Judaism is so strong that they commit themselves to this struggle;
*Our shuls and communities are obligated to do everything we can to welcome them as Jews and as human beings, without sugar-coating the Torah’s view on homosexuality;
*Yes, even if homosexual desire is genetic/hard-wired it can still be prohibited;
*Recognize that the film does have an agenda, and portrays reality through a lens; it cuts off the interviewed rabbis, and doesn't give us any real insight into the relatives, particularly those accused of shunning, at all.
I didn’t even enter the room to watch the film; I stayed in the next room, preparing a gemara shiur while semi-listening to the familiar voices of gay men and women telling their stories.
But as I was semi-listening, I did have a thought crystallize for me. I knew it on some level before, I’ve certainly applied it before, but I never really understood it as clearly as I did tonight: That this issue of homosexuality in the Orthodox community is really much more a matter of sociology and community than it is a matter of religion.
The voices of outraged people, pained people, isolated people, sad people, resigned people, emancipated people, are not unique to this situation. This particular crisis is more intense and painful and intractable than others, but, fundamentally, their voices sound just like the voices of people disinherited by family and community for a whole host of reasons - religion, economics, personality, whatever.
I’ve heard these voices in my office, on the telephone, at kiddush at shul, from homosexual and heterosexual, from teenager and senior citizen, from Jew and non-Jew; these are the voices of people who are dealing with years, lifetimes, of self-doubt and emotional pain, because they have been told by people they love and respect that they are defective.
Therefore: The comfort we can offer people by telling them, “We don’t think you’re evil,” and “Of course we’re your friends,” matters a great deal, even if we cannot provide the heter (leniency) so many seek. Far more important than validation as a gay Jew is validation as a Jew and human being altogether.
I am convinced that the damage wrought by telling a vulnerable adolescent he/she is immoral, evil or deviant is far worse than allowing him/her to remain gay.
To my mind, most of the voices in that film and in life are not really asking, “Tell me you think it’s all right.” Rather, for most of them it’s about, “Tell me you think I’m all right.”
Which is something, I think, that we in the Torah-observant community can and must do more often.
[Haveil Havalim, hosted by the illustrious Jack, is here!]
Friday, November 14, 2008
It's what I do that defines me
[Haveil Havalim is here!]
From time to time I am called by a local hospital or hospice to meet with unaffiliated Jewish patients and their families, to help them through a tough time. It's never easy to enter into that sort of sort-of-counseling, sort-of-officiating relationship with people you've never met, but I generally come away feeling that I have accomplished something good.
But it doesn't always work out that way. I received such a call a few weeks ago for a local hospice, I visited, and came away cold. The patient was terminally unconscious, and in terms of the family I had no sense at the end that they wanted follow-up, or that they had felt anything at all from our interaction. They had said at the start, "We just want a rabbi to come recite a prayer," and, indeed, it seems that this was all they wanted.
I felt like I could have done more, made some connection, developed some tie with them. I felt like I had failed them (and of course myself), by not becoming more than just a functionary. Yes, I had tried, but effort isn't what counts; results are what count.
From the earliest ages, when we swing a bat and miss, when we scrawl our first letters and compare them to the teacher's perfect A and B, when we bring home our first report card with less than an A, we are taught this merciful refrain: "It's the effort that counts." "It's the thought that counts." "What matters is that you try."
This is fine pedagogic medicine if delivered in measured doses, and it certainly mirrors a Torah philosophy. The gemara delivers this lesson many times, in many different ways:
"HaShem considers positive intentions as though they had been converted to deeds."
"It's not up to you to complete the task, but you are not free to do nothing."
"Whether one does a lot or a little, it is all the same so long as he directs his heart Heavenward."
Nonetheless, for me, and, I think, for most human beings, this mantra is unsoothing, unsatisfying - and wrong. It's not the thought that counts, it's not the effort that counts, it's the result that counts.
Try telling an engineer whose bridge collapsed because of an unforeseeable flaw in the materials, "You did everything you could."
Try telling a rabbi whose words of Torah and humanity failed to inspire or comfort the relatives of a terminally ill person, "You did your best, and that's what matters."
Try telling a physician who just lost a patient, "It's the effort that counts."
And this is certainly true for those children who hear the mantra most often:
Try telling a 10-year-old boy who struck out with the bases loaded, "But you tried."
Try telling a teenage girl who is mocked for her weight, "You're doing the best you can."
It seems to me that the concept of valuing effort is not wrong, but it's inadequate for the human psyche. We don't take solace in trying, we take satisfaction from succeeding.
My rebbetzin (of course) has a good answer for my dissatisfaction: The effort counts, even without total achievement, because there generally is some achievement. Whether it's muscle development in athletics or learning 90% of the material for a test or making one friend instead of ten or prolonging a patient's life for one week instead of finding a cure, that achievement still matters.
Even if I really made no impact on that family I visited, I know I made an impact on myself. I took another step in the lifelong process of habituating myself to chesed, by getting out of my house in the middle of the night to go help someone. I took another step in that process by doing it for a stranger, and by overcoming the anxiety of meeting someone new, in this terrible context, for the sake of helping another human being. I did achieve, I did succeed, even if it wasn't in my ultimate goal.
Still, that's clearly a bedieved, an after-the-fact consolation prize. Ultimately, I don't just want to succeed at something, I want to succeed at my goal.
Or as Bruce said to Rachel: "It's not who I am underneath; it's what I do that defines me."
From time to time I am called by a local hospital or hospice to meet with unaffiliated Jewish patients and their families, to help them through a tough time. It's never easy to enter into that sort of sort-of-counseling, sort-of-officiating relationship with people you've never met, but I generally come away feeling that I have accomplished something good.
But it doesn't always work out that way. I received such a call a few weeks ago for a local hospice, I visited, and came away cold. The patient was terminally unconscious, and in terms of the family I had no sense at the end that they wanted follow-up, or that they had felt anything at all from our interaction. They had said at the start, "We just want a rabbi to come recite a prayer," and, indeed, it seems that this was all they wanted.
I felt like I could have done more, made some connection, developed some tie with them. I felt like I had failed them (and of course myself), by not becoming more than just a functionary. Yes, I had tried, but effort isn't what counts; results are what count.
From the earliest ages, when we swing a bat and miss, when we scrawl our first letters and compare them to the teacher's perfect A and B, when we bring home our first report card with less than an A, we are taught this merciful refrain: "It's the effort that counts." "It's the thought that counts." "What matters is that you try."
This is fine pedagogic medicine if delivered in measured doses, and it certainly mirrors a Torah philosophy. The gemara delivers this lesson many times, in many different ways:
"HaShem considers positive intentions as though they had been converted to deeds."
"It's not up to you to complete the task, but you are not free to do nothing."
"Whether one does a lot or a little, it is all the same so long as he directs his heart Heavenward."
Nonetheless, for me, and, I think, for most human beings, this mantra is unsoothing, unsatisfying - and wrong. It's not the thought that counts, it's not the effort that counts, it's the result that counts.
Try telling an engineer whose bridge collapsed because of an unforeseeable flaw in the materials, "You did everything you could."
Try telling a rabbi whose words of Torah and humanity failed to inspire or comfort the relatives of a terminally ill person, "You did your best, and that's what matters."
Try telling a physician who just lost a patient, "It's the effort that counts."
And this is certainly true for those children who hear the mantra most often:
Try telling a 10-year-old boy who struck out with the bases loaded, "But you tried."
Try telling a teenage girl who is mocked for her weight, "You're doing the best you can."
It seems to me that the concept of valuing effort is not wrong, but it's inadequate for the human psyche. We don't take solace in trying, we take satisfaction from succeeding.
My rebbetzin (of course) has a good answer for my dissatisfaction: The effort counts, even without total achievement, because there generally is some achievement. Whether it's muscle development in athletics or learning 90% of the material for a test or making one friend instead of ten or prolonging a patient's life for one week instead of finding a cure, that achievement still matters.
Even if I really made no impact on that family I visited, I know I made an impact on myself. I took another step in the lifelong process of habituating myself to chesed, by getting out of my house in the middle of the night to go help someone. I took another step in that process by doing it for a stranger, and by overcoming the anxiety of meeting someone new, in this terrible context, for the sake of helping another human being. I did achieve, I did succeed, even if it wasn't in my ultimate goal.
Still, that's clearly a bedieved, an after-the-fact consolation prize. Ultimately, I don't just want to succeed at something, I want to succeed at my goal.
Or as Bruce said to Rachel: "It's not who I am underneath; it's what I do that defines me."
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Permission [not] to believe - a congregant
Even in my eleventh year in the pulpit, I’m still finding surprises.
Recently, I was meeting with someone regarding a social conflict. Changing some facts and names, here is a brief rundown of this run-of-the-mill case: Abernathy claims that Bernard insulted him at a public event. Abernathy and Bernard are both congregants of mine. Abernathy came to me talk about the situation.
For a good 45 minutes, Abernathy described what had happened, the history, how hurt he and his children were, the ramifications, the things he could/should/ought/might do in the wake of this public insult, etc. I mostly listened.
After the description was over, I asked a few questions and then began to discuss practical steps Abernathy could take – at which point Abernathy interjected, “Wait a minute - you’re not allowed to take sides. You’re not supposed to believe me, are you?”
This was a first for me: Generally, people assume I will/should/must believe their version of events, by dint of their own honesty as well as our historical relationship. If I were to say, “You know, I can’t really accept lashon hara,” or, “Of course there is another side to this story as well,” many (most?) people would be rather insulted, and not understand my point. Which is why Abernathy’s permission not to believe took me by surprise.
Even within my own mind, I have difficulty not believing people when they speak to me. They present stories with such emotion and sincerity that it’s hard to remember that this is only one side of the story. A business owner describing a competitor’s actions, a wife talking about her husband, a teenage child complaining about parental conduct – it’s very hard to listen to stories of victimhood without naturally gravitating to the alleged victim’s tale. Still, I do work on keeping an element of skepticism, because at the end of the day, the person telling the story is still only one side. There’s a reason why judges on a beit din are not permitted to hear one side without the other present.
So, as Abernathy pointed out, I do work to maintain neutrality – but I don’t explicitly inform people that I am taking their words with a grain of salt. I listen and advise sympathetically, as best I can, based upon the party’s story and what I perceive to be the party’s best interests.
It was very considerate of Abernathy to recognize my obligation to be a neutral agent. I hope there are more Abernathys out there than I realized.
Recently, I was meeting with someone regarding a social conflict. Changing some facts and names, here is a brief rundown of this run-of-the-mill case: Abernathy claims that Bernard insulted him at a public event. Abernathy and Bernard are both congregants of mine. Abernathy came to me talk about the situation.
For a good 45 minutes, Abernathy described what had happened, the history, how hurt he and his children were, the ramifications, the things he could/should/ought/might do in the wake of this public insult, etc. I mostly listened.
After the description was over, I asked a few questions and then began to discuss practical steps Abernathy could take – at which point Abernathy interjected, “Wait a minute - you’re not allowed to take sides. You’re not supposed to believe me, are you?”
This was a first for me: Generally, people assume I will/should/must believe their version of events, by dint of their own honesty as well as our historical relationship. If I were to say, “You know, I can’t really accept lashon hara,” or, “Of course there is another side to this story as well,” many (most?) people would be rather insulted, and not understand my point. Which is why Abernathy’s permission not to believe took me by surprise.
Even within my own mind, I have difficulty not believing people when they speak to me. They present stories with such emotion and sincerity that it’s hard to remember that this is only one side of the story. A business owner describing a competitor’s actions, a wife talking about her husband, a teenage child complaining about parental conduct – it’s very hard to listen to stories of victimhood without naturally gravitating to the alleged victim’s tale. Still, I do work on keeping an element of skepticism, because at the end of the day, the person telling the story is still only one side. There’s a reason why judges on a beit din are not permitted to hear one side without the other present.
So, as Abernathy pointed out, I do work to maintain neutrality – but I don’t explicitly inform people that I am taking their words with a grain of salt. I listen and advise sympathetically, as best I can, based upon the party’s story and what I perceive to be the party’s best interests.
It was very considerate of Abernathy to recognize my obligation to be a neutral agent. I hope there are more Abernathys out there than I realized.
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