Don’t lose your soul!
Yep, the roller coaster of life. Stuff comes our way every now and then. Sometimes they blow over, you pull through, you move on. Sometimes the issues are intense and they consume you and when the dust settles you are forever changed.
How we change or in what manner we change is the point of this article.
Innocence is that part of us that would like to believe that our pure perception of the world is holy and sacred and that it will always be that way. When the realities of life show us that many of those sacred spaces are really not that sacred we can become broken.
Recently we started the transition of moving the twins out of their cribs (protective prisons) into proper beds. Besides the fun of having two kids coming out of bed at night and at the crack of dawn (ok, a little dramatic there) it was also interesting to watch different temperaments dealing with the difficulty of separating from their safe environment of their bed.
In fact one particular psychotherapist wrote that all of us are indeed damaged because of the trauma of being weaned. The shock of the shattering of perceptions of those sacred places…
Anyway, what happens when you have a shattering of those sacred places is that potentially one can become jaded to think that there are no sacred places, at all, anywhere.
That is a travesty!
Everything or nothing thinking, black and white thinking is not good for ones health, not good for society and simply not true. Because the basket has some rotten apples doesn’t mean that there aren’t other good apples in the basket and it surely doesn’t mean that every barrel has rotten apples.
Without the knowledge that some of those sacred spaces have brokenness and hurt to them you’d never be able to repair. So, think of it as an opportunity to be more aware of the challenges in the world and our need to heal them.
Good thoughts to think as the long days of summer begin to wane and darkness begins to set in earlier each day.
Have an enlightened Shabbos!
Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman
