Counting the Omer: Thursday Night, 19 May 2016/13 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Six of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-seven Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

I’ve been a hard-working, burn-the-candle-at-both-ends kind of guy for a good portion of my life.  It’s not that I don’t know how to relax; I can chill with the best of them.  But if my ‘chill times’ are not an interlude between periods of intense activity, then I don’t feel fulfilled.  To illustrate, I’ve often bristled at the inactivity that vacations bring.  For the first day or two, it’s great.  No responsibilities!  No schedule!  And then I start climbing the walls.  If it isn’t an active vacation, where I get to do physical activities – and mild physical activities are fine, they don’t have to be strenuous or adrenalin-inducing – then I don’t return home rested.  Instead, on sedentary vacations I tend to overeat, and I return home frustrated.

This has changed a bit now that I’m speeding toward the end of my sixth decade of life.  I’ve learned to take things a little slower.  But work has always defined me that way that it does many men, perhaps generally more than women.  I’ve always thrived best when I’ve felt needed by a variety of people, for a variety of reasons.  Why else would someone become a Rabbi, after all?

It’s no secret that work often leads to Happiness.  I know I’m not the only one who has always felt happiest when I’ve had satisfaction from my work.  I’ve never been unemployed in my adult life, except for very short periods or when I’ve been studying, and even then I worked part-time.  When I was in rabbinical school, except the first year, I had all kinds of part-time jobs.  When I was in graduate school, I was a prison chaplain.

But I know people who have been unemployed for extended periods:  even years.  And I see how being unemployed, wears a person down over time.  Of course there’s the stress of diminished finances.  But that’s not the entire story.  Unemployment itself is a weight that can and does interfere with Happiness.  I’ve seen people who were reasonably happy when employed, turn to misery when unemployed for more than a short period.  It’s anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon to be sure, but it’s powerful evidence nonetheless.

We have a tendency to think of our employment primarily in terms of providing us with the parnassah, or income, to live.  And of course, that’s natural.  Anybody (especially a man) who lacks a drive to provide for themselves and their family, is missing something important.  Of course, for some that drive produces more success than for others.  But the drive itself is more important than the success.  And the way that we respond to that drive gives an important glimpse into the soul of the person.

But our work is much more than a way to pay the bills.  At least, I’m asserting that it aught to be.  I’ve written before about the need to answer one’s individual calling.  It goes without saying that one must first find one’s calling.  I’ve personally been blessed in that my calling and my career have, for most of my life, been one and the same.  No everybody has this advantage.  I know of people who have trained hard for lucrative careers which, in the end, provided them with a good living but little fulfillment.  I’m talking about lawyers and dentists, for example.  Not that one cannot find one’s calling at the bar or in dentistry.  Rather, the people I’m talking about pursued those professions for their rewards but the most important reward – work satisfaction – eluded them.

So, for those who cannot point to the activity that pays the rent and the groceries, and think of it as a calling, it is necessary to find the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling one’s calling, in ‘off-duty’ activities.

But even if one cannot see one’s work as a calling, that does not diminish the importance of work in one’s life.  Work is ennobling.  Instead of seeing it as something we simply have to do in order to enjoy our leisure, we should see it as a ticket to self-esteem.  To purpose in life.  To Happiness.

If you follow my writing, you’re aware of my skepticism concerning the modern Welfare State.  I know that a few of my readers are dependent upon Centrelink to survive. (For my non-Australian readers, that is the central address for social services and benefits in this country.)  And when I criticise this system, I hope I don’t sound heartless and as if I want people who depend on these benefits to be homeless.  I don’t.  But I also don’t want people to be hopeless, and hopelessness is a trait I see in most people I meet, who are long-term beneficiaries of the state’s largesse.  It’s unfortunate that the very system intended to give people a safety net, usually entangles them in its web of long-term dependency.

The Welfare State is just one aspect of the Nanny State that kills initiative and creativity in its drive to protect us from ourselves.  An American friend who has lived in Australia for some time, described its effect to me thusly:  A few years back, if someone jumped off a bridge, people would shake their heads and say, ‘Poor Sod.’  Now they spend millions putting nets on the bridges so that people can’t jump off.  Look, as a religious Jew I don’t want people to commit suicide by any means, jumping off bridges included.  But the state’s purpose is to protect us from aggressor nations and to keep public order.  It isn’t to take the risk out of life, period.

And lest you think I’m being overly critical of Australia, understand that Australia is simply going – has gone! – in the same direction, in this respect, as virtually all of Western Europe.  And in truth, America is not far behind.  During the 1990’s, a rare period of cooperation between the [Clinton] White House and the [Republican] Congress, produced a raft of great programs which got people off public assistance and back to work.  But the past decade or so has seen the re-emergence of the Welfare State and its culture of entitlement in the USA.

It’s Thursday once more; with sunset today begins erev Shabbat, the eve of the Sabbath.  Shabbat has meaning because it offers a time-out from our normal work and activities.  It gives us a means to refresh ourselves and examine, among other things, the work we do the rest of the week – and ask ourselves if we’ve found meaning in that work.  The Sabbath provides us with a glimpse of Olam Haba – of the World to Come, where we’ll be freed from the need to earn a living.  But Olam Hazeh – this world – is made for work.  And that need not be seen as a prison.  There are days when I, like you, would prefer not to have to go to work.  But when I think of a life without work, I wonder about the difficulty of finding meaning in life.  Shabbat shalom.

Counting the Omer: Wednesday Night, 18 May 2016/12 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Five of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-six Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

My wife, Clara, shared the above même on her profile on Facebook the other day.  I thought it rang true enough to share as my daily thought for the Counting of the Omer, with Happiness still the operative theme.

          What, you don’t read Hebrew??!  Okay, I’ll translate it for you…I think this is more-or-less accurate…

CEASE:	START:
Talking	Listening
Planning	Acting
Complaining	Inspiring
Worrying	Hoping
Casting Doubt	Believing
Doing Nothing	Working Hard
Being Downcast	Smiling
Being a Doubter	Trusting
Resenting	Appreciating
Hating	Loving

         

          Great advice for everybody; it speaks for itself and provides good counsel for those reaching for Happiness.

Counting the Omer: Tuesday Night, 17 May 2016/11 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Four of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-five Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

In thinking deeply about those things in life that can be predicted to drive one towards Happiness, it is difficult for my thoughts to stray far from the subject of friendship.  Few things in life are better predictors of Happiness, than the forming of close and enduring friendships.

     The difficulty of finding true friends was addressed as early as Cicero (106 BCE-43 BCE) who wrote:  Few men have true friends, and few are worthy.  True friendship is splendid, and all splendid things are rare.  Many foolish men often think about money, few about friends; but they wander:  We are able to be strong without money, but without friendship life is not strong and we are nothing.  Cicero further wrote:  Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

     There are many, more contemporary voices who have stated similar sentiments, but I’ll refrain in order to allow you the pleasure of looking them up yourself.  Suffice it to say that the idea that true friends are a rarity, is an observation commonly made by thinking people in every age.  And yet, friends are really a key to Happiness.

     Why does it seem so difficult to make and keep true friends?  I think that everybody will answer that question differently.  Most of us will point to circumstances of our lives that have conspired to prevent us from forming, and cementing, friendships.  I’ve got my own; want to hear my personal whinge on the subject?  (If you’re not one of my Australian readers, know that ‘whinge’ is ‘Strine’ – Aussie slang – for what we Americans call a ‘whine.’  So a ‘whinger’ is the equivalent of a ‘whiner.’)  So, I’ve found it hard to form true friendships because of my calling to the Rabbinate; people either relate to me as a figurehead more than as a friend, or I determine that people whom I meet, need a Rabbi more than they need a friend…and at the end of the day, I can’t be both.  Anyway, that’s my whinge.  Everybody else will address their paucity of friends in some different way.  But the truth is that we all lack friends for the same reasons.

     We lack friends because we expend our friend-making energies making, instead, contacts and circles of influence.  I know:  these are business terms.  And it’s not my purpose to demean or criticise the process of building business networks.  But building networks of friends is very different.  And it requires a very different mindset.

     When I think back on all the friends I’ve had in my life – most of whom I still have, even though I may not have been in close proximity with them for a long time – I see commonalities in how the friendships got started.  In all cases, the acquaintanceship that preceded the friendship started because of some common interest.  A mutual interest in Jewish life, for example.  A mutual occupation – Air Force chaplain, for example.  A mutual recreational interest – ukulele playing or firearms marksmanship, for example.  Most friendships grew out of an initial acquaintanceship resulting from some mutual interest.  But how and why they then became friendships, rather than remaining as acquaintanceships when so many other acquaintanceships resulting from the same mutual interests did not – that’s an entirely different matter.

     At the end of the day, true friendship does not come from shared interests.  It comes from a touching of souls that simply cannot be explained – or predicted.  Let me give you a couple of examples of my enduring friendships, to illustrate.  If the friends I’m describing happen to be reading this and recognize themselves in my narrative, I hope you don’t find it [too] embarrassing!

     One friend is someone I’ve known for almost 20 years.  I met him on my first day as a US Air Force chaplain; he was a colleague at my first base.  I remember saying to him, once we’d introduced ourselves and he told me he was a Presbyterian:  We’re going to be good friends.  Now, I’m really not sure why I said that; I’d not had a lot of friends before (or since) who were Presbyterians.  But for some reason, that was my gut reaction to meeting him.  And it has proven to be true!  Apart from the fact that I met him on my first day of active duty as a chaplain, there was nothing overtly in common that suggested we would become such good friends.  I was married with two young children; he was – and remains – single.  I am introverted, he is a ‘flaming’ extrovert.  We have no particular shared interests – except perhaps that we’re both foodies, and I guess that that’s something! – that would have led us to spend a lot of time together.  And yet, 20 years on we remain in close contact.  We have been to Israel together, co-leading an interfaith tour.  We’ve vacationed together (along with Clara and our kids) in Moab, Utah.  I look forward with pleasure to the next time we will get together, may it be soon.

     The other friend I haven’t known so long:  only about seven years.  We met because the daughter of a member of the congregation I was serving (who wasn’t herself Jewish) referred him to me for some questions about Judaism.  He’s not Jewish either, rather a devoted follower of Jesus of Nazareth who believes G-d has called him to live a life in accordance with the Torah.  So our relationship began with him thirsting for knowledge about Judaism, and my availability and willingness to share it with him.  But the relationship ultimately became something entirely different.  Some shared experiences, including a wonderful weekend camping trip with him and a few other men, and just spending lots of time together talking about things, and the deep touching of souls that happened along the way, turned this acquaintanceship into one of those rare friendships that we cherish.

     These are not the only two friendships I can point to!  Any other friends who happen to be reading this, please don’t feel bad about not making this particular ‘list’!  I thought that these two would best illustrate the mystery of true friendship, and how unpredictable the process of forming those friendships can be.  In both cases, a commonality was that there was no particular predictor that these would become my best friends.  And yet in both cases, with time a deep connection simply formed, and we both nurtured it with an unspoken bond of mutuality.

     Mutuality is really the key to true friendship.  Two can’t be friends if one of the two is not seeking friendship.  We form all kinds of acquaintanceships – some superficial, some much deeper – that stem from a dovetailing of interests.  We enjoy spending time with these individuals.  These acquaintanceships can and sometimes do become friendships.  But it isn’t automatic.  Sometimes it simply does not happen.

     Besides mutuality of need and desire for friendship, there must be a mutuality of position in the relationship.  True friendships seldom develop between boss and employee or superior and subordinate.  As my colleagues in the Rabbinate and in the ministry in general can attest, true friendships seldom develop from friendly relations between them and a member of their congregations.  Many colleagues warn against becoming friendly with congregants, because at the end of the day, the clergyman or woman cannot be a true friend with someone whom they meet thus.  Personally, I prefer never to say never in this matter, but my experience has largely born the consequences of this truism.  If a true friendship is going to precede from an acquaintanceship formed under terms of non-mutuality of position, it must at some point transcend that aspect of relationship and ultimately become one of equals.

     If you’ve been reading my blog posts with any regularly, you’ve seen that I claim to be a person largely driven by the quest for rational knowledge.  Yet friendship essentially transcends rationality.  We cannot make a list of the things that will make us cling in friendship to one person and not to another.  Let me correct myself; we can make such a list, but at the end of the day many of those we end up counting as our true friends would not have made the list.

     We cannot predict who will be our friends, but we can recognise the spark of friendship, nurture it, and cherish it.  There are few surer ways to Happiness, than the forming of friendships.  

Counting the Omer: Monday Night, 16 May 2016/10 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Three of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-four Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

          A friend of Clara and me wrote this morning, offering some excellent feedback on Crohn’s Disease.  This friend suffers from Crohn’s and wanted me to know that recent research had drawn the conclusion that Crohn’s is caused by bacteria, and the increase in its incidence in recent year can probably be attributed to increases in travel.  That’s good to know; admittedly-superficial checking on my part before publishing yesterday’s blog post did not reveal that with such certainty:  rather, an uncertainty as to several different causes including a probable genetic connection.  The friend shared some very helpful thoughts including the importance of a positive outlook when suffering from such a condition, and not letting it define oneself.  I agree 100 percent that this is great food for thought on the subject and will get to it in a moment!

          But first, let me thank our friend for the feedback.  There is precious little forthcoming in my calling, even when I specifically request it on something I’ve written or spoken about, or some program I’ve presented.  I’m not complaining; it’s the nature of what I do! J  But I do appreciate getting it, both as an affirmation that what I do does impact people out there, and also to help me to think through issues.  So please, if what I write about in my blog does make you think to offer a response…don’t be shy!  Just please:  if you’re responding through the Blogspot site and not via e-mail, don’t comment anonymously.  If I know who you are, and how to contact you, it will enable us to have a dialogue.  If you send in an anonymous comment, I will ignore it!  In this case, experience is my teacher.

          I would like to respond to my friend’s feedback, and then take up their challenge for another direction to go in my thoughts.

          Sometimes, when people assert that this or that disease is either caused, or exacerbated by, emotions, they can make it sound like they’re saying, it’s all in your head.  Of course, if the person makes it sound that way, it is apt to be taken as a dismissive response to somebody’s suffering.  In pointing at unhappiness as a root cause of physical illness, I hope that I haven’t sounded that way.  Of course, for a disease such as Crohn’s – or just about any other – there is some biological cause.  Even mental illness whose root is by definition non-organic, is understood to alter the body chemistry.  That’s why doctors treat mental disorders with psychotropic medications; the root cause can be treated with talk and other therapies, but the symptoms must also be treated when they reach a certain point of severity.  Otherwise, the sufferer will not be well enough to work on the mental side.

          Having said that, there is so much definitive research linking disease to mental state.  My uncle, Dr. Leonard Schneider z”l, was a professor of clinical psychology at University of Southern California and was part of a multi-disciplinary team looking into this connection.  It was many years ago, when I was a young man.  I remember him suggesting that even in those with cancer, an apparent connection with mental/emotional state can be established that shows the latter making the patient more susceptible to the disease, as well as exacerbating its effects.  This is not to say that we should treat cancer with meditation instead of chemotherapy.  Rather, that the patient should take a holistic approach to his or her healing and work on all aspects of themselves as they seek to defeat the disease.  If meditation (to give an example) will help the patient find the serenity they need to fight the disease, then it should be considered as part of the regimen of treatment.  If the patient is patently unhappy, they should certainly use whatever resources available – even my blog! – to help them find a route to Happiness.

          And that brings me back to what my friend said, and I think it was profound, concerning living with a debilitating disease – in this case, Crohn’s.  When you suffer from some physical condition, it is important not to define yourself – or allow others to define you – by it.  Especially if it’s a condition that is obvious to someone who may see you:  say, a skin affliction or other visually-obvious condition.  There’s no question that others – especially those with whom you share only a superficial encounter – will define you by your disease.  It’s your task to not let them.  To look in the mirror, or examine yourself, and see beyond your affliction.  If you cannot define yourself in a way that transcends your affliction, then how would you expect others to do so?  You must learn to see yourself in the way, that you would like others to see you.  Easy?  Not by a longshot.  You cannot control the way that others see you.  But you can influence it, by seeing yourself positively and by conveying an air of positivity.  Through self-acceptance, you can make others’ non-acceptance mean far less.  Through self-acceptance, you can begin to reach for the elusive Happiness.

Counting the Omer: Sunday Night, 15 May 2016/9 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Two of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-three Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

          Last week, we were driving home from visiting someone and I turned to Clara and asked:  Why is it that almost everybody we know is physically sick, whilst we’re consistently healthy?  We had just met someone who was suffering from Crohn’s Disease.  The point of my question was unambiguous.  Not only most of our friends and people we meet in the course of my work, but members of our respective families, all suffer from various maladies and are dependent upon all kinds of medications and regular treatments to make their lives bearable and productive.  The two of us have been to the doctor once each in the four years we’ve lived in Australia:  me for a knee pain that I feared was a torn ligament at the time but proved to be nothing revealed on an MRI and which went away after a few months; and Clara for a vision deterioration that frightened her for a few weeks but which tests could not pin down and also went away with time. 

I drove away from this meeting wondering why the stark contrast between, again, almost everybody we know, and Clara and me.  We come from families full of members with all kinds of physical complaints, so it’s unlikely genetics.  And our lifestyle isn’t anything that special.  We are fortunate to have a gym adjacent to our unit and we use it perhaps three times a week for relatively mild exercise.  Every now and then, we’ll swim some laps in the pool, also conveniently adjacent to our unit.  We walk fairly regularly, but not at a blistering pace or to epic distances:  more like relaxing strolls.  Our diet is reasonably healthy but not really deliberately so.  Although Clara has no sweet tooth whatsoever, I love chocolate.  We can scarf down hot chips with the best of them, with plenty of the fake chicken salt, loaded with MSG, on them.  Yum!  We’re certainly carrying at least a handful of spare kilograms around.  Look, I hope you don’t think I’m bragging; that’s certainly not my aim!  Rather, as we were driving back home I turned to Clara and posed the question, because we are after all in the business of helping people.  And if we’ve stumbled upon some secret that keeps us exceptionally healthier than many others around us, we should want to share it with others.

Clara is the one in the family with the medical smarts:  she worked for many years as a registered nurse, has a master’s degree in intensive care and follows current trends in medicine even though she has not worked in hospital in some years.  She explained to me about Crohn’s Disease; it is a disorder of the digestive tract, which makes its sufferers often unable to eat normally without painful and embarrassing consequences.  Over the years, we’ve known a number of people who suffer from it.

  Is it nerves?  I asked.  Is it caused by people tying themselves up in knots emotionally?  Clara said that it’s one of those conditions that really cannot be pinned down as to cause.  It is a young person’s disease, striking people for the first time most often between the ages of 15 and 25 years.  Clara allowed as how, like many bona fide medical conditions whose source cannot be traced, Crohn’s like many other ailments certainly may be brought on – at least in some cases – by emotional stress.

As we talked about emotional stress and its deleterious effects on physical health, I thought about all the people we know who are clearly unhappy with their lives and how they tend to suffer from all kinds of medical conditions.  Crohn’s is just the start of the list.  We know so many people with debilitating pain and health issues who are also people who stress endlessly over their lives.  We also know a few people who, like us, suffer from very few maladies – and some of them are in their 80’s and even 90’s.  And every one of these healthy individuals displays signs of having conquered, certainly in part, the Happiness challenge.

Clara tells me that many doctors have been unafraid to state publicly the positive effects on medical health that come from a positive state of mind, and the opposite.  I’m personally not a believer in faith healing.  If, G-d forbid I do get sick, please take me to a doctor!  Not to a chapel or a reading room.  Having no medical training myself, I hope that my speculations on the subject do not make me sound like someone with a penchant for quackery.  But after thinking long and hard about it, I am convinced that Happiness has a profoundly positive effect on one’s health.  And misery has a profoundly negative effect.

Keep striving for Happiness, and be healthy and well!  Amen. 

Counting the Omer: Saturday Night, 14 May 2016/8 Iyar 5776

Today is Day One of Week Four of the Omer.  That is Twenty-two Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

My thoughts for this evening’s installment come from our discussion of the Torah portion, during the morning service earlier today.

As I asserted this morning, the laws found in the weekly Torah portion Kedoshim, which we read this morning, are purely rational.  I’m talking more about the mitzvoth shebein adam lechavero – commandments [concerning behaviours] that are between a person and his/her fellow – to put it differently, the ‘ethical’ commandments.  When I say that they are rational, I mean that they are not subject to how one feels about the behaviour or one’s fellow at the moment.  To remind us that they are absolute, most of the laws in this portion of Torah are followed by:  I am Hashem your G-d.  In other words:  This law is by Divine decree.  It is not subject to how you might feel, by the affection or loyalty – or lack thereof – you may feel towards your specific fellow-man at the moment of the behaviour.

To use one of these commandments as an example:  we’re told that the wages of an employee will not remain with you until morning.  In other words, in the Torah’s ethical universe, an employee must be paid at the end of the work day, what he earned during the hours of that day.  That isn’t dependent upon how good the employer feels about that worker; it is an absolute obligation.  No matter how little affection a particular employee might evoke in his employer’s mind, for whatever reason, he is owed his wages before he leaves the employer’s premises for the night.  The employee’s ability to buy food lest he go hungry that night, or firewood lest he go cold, cannot be held hostage to his employer’s feelings.

(Here I’ll add for the benefit of my reader who didn’t worship with us this morning; this does not mean that a Jewish employer in our day and age is obligated to pay his employees in full every day.  Halachic authorities today understand that it is seldom the custom in most employment marketplaces to pay daily, and that to do so, with all the employer’s obligations regarding the deduction of taxes and what-not from an employee’s pay, could be onerous.  On the other hand, it does counsel due consideration for the employee who needs a partial advance on his pay already earned, until the official payday.  Lest he go hungry or cold.  And that consideration on the part of the employer should not take into account how he feels about that particular employee.)

So, with whatever adjustments today’s halachic decisors have made to account for he ways things are done today, the laws presented in Kedoshim are absolute.  They are rational; they ae not subject to the way one feels.  And in reality, Happiness is similarly rational.

People are subject to emotional swings.  That’s part of being human.  Whenever I meet someone who is emotionally flat, who displays no emotion at all, it frightens me to no end.  People who have somehow learned not to experience emotions, are dangerous.  They can be conditioned to do just about anything.  It is the human emotions that prevent us being turned into machine-like automatons.  When I meet someone who has been ‘brainwashed’ to act automatically through their exposure to, say, a religious cult…well, let’s just say it leaves me feeling cold all over.  So in extremis, it is our emotional response that makes us human and not machines.

But in normal circumstances, it is a mistake to rely too much on input from our emotions.  Because emotions are incredible fallible and un-reliable.  In normal, non-emergency situations, it is always best to rely upon one’s rational response.  We can easily learn what is right and wrong, but if we rely upon our feelings to guide us they will fail us time and time again.  So the solution is not to suppress our emotions since they are what we need to respond to extreme situations that, after all, do come up regularly.  Rather, the challenge is to master our emotions, which can so easily lead us astray.

This mastery is a key to Happiness.  Reliance upon our emotions to make decisions – to put it differently, to let our heart, not our head lead us – will lead to bad decisions time and time again.  Especially in situations – and most are like this – where how we handle a particular situation bears consequences not only for ourselves but or someone – or someones – else.  So when we feel those powerful emotions begin to well up in us, we need to step back and ask ourselves:  what’s the correct decision, the correct course of action here?  And if we do this, what we end up doing will seldom be what our first impulse was.  And that will be a good thing.  Because that first impulse, whilst it make have felt really good at the time, will often carry negative consequences that can last a very long time and impede our Happiness interminably.  It’s definitely something to think about.  A Good Week, everybody!    

Counting the Omer: Friday night, 13 May 2016/7 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Seven of Week Three of the Omer.  That is Day Twenty-one of the Omer.   The theme of the Week is Happiness.

          I know that I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating.  And I know it bears repeating, because no matter how many times I address the topic, we see people around us – people whom we believe we have the power to influence – beset by this problem.

Comparing ourselves to others – in terms of accomplishment, wealth, or just about any other measure – is as sure a route to unhappiness as there is.  Of the unhappiest people we know and love, virtually all of them succumb to this pitfall.

The problem with such comparisons is that, no matter how well you’ve done in any particular area or how well-endowed you are in any particular measure of looks, skills, or health, there is someone out there whose measure exceeds yours.  So, looking at life as a contest to see whom you can best, is ultimately a losing proposition.

          Anybody who has raised children, has likely experienced the ‘Johnny has more toys than I have/Johnny’s family went to Disneyland and we didn’t/Johnny has a dog and we don’t/Johnny’s house has a swimming pool and ours doesn’t’ comparisons between your family and some friend or friends.  Clara and I were not exempt from this, despite my being a Rabbi!  And just like many of my readers surely reacted, when confronted with their children’s comparisons of this nature, we reacted by telling our kids:  Count your blessings!  In other words, don’t play the game of looking at ways in which you compare unequally to others, because you will always lose.  Rather, learn to celebrate all the things that you have or are, because the truth is that each one of us has so much.

          I have a confession to make.  As many times as we told our kids, count your blessings, it didn’t shut down the ‘Johnny has…’ comparisons.  Maybe for a short while, but not because they had actually internalised the lesson:  rather, because they knew they weren’t getting any sympathy from us.  So, with that experience behind me as a parent, why should I expect to get the lesson across as a Rabbi?  Do I expect more success with adults?  No, I really don’t.  But still I repeat it, because it is an eternal truth and I owe you nothing less.   

          Much has been written about the folly of shielding ourselves from the fact that it is a competitive world.  In our present culture of Political Correctness, we seem to go to ridiculous lengths to shield ourselves, and especially our children from competition.  Grades in school get inflated, lest some kids feel like under-achievers.  In youth sports leagues, teams on incredible winning streaks find themselves disqualified from competition for their success!  Whilst all of this may start from a well-meaning intent to shield kids from the crippling blow of losing at a young age, it is often carried to absurdity.  Yes, we should teach kids not to compare themselves to others celebrate when they reach a Personal Best even if it isn’t as good as somebody else’s.  But we can’t shield them from the fact that, at every turn in life, there are winners and losers.  And nobody is going to win all the time.  Even the Donald Trump’s of the world fail.  One argument used by the detractors of his candidacy, is that he hasn’t been so consistently successful, as his proponents want to think.  But whatever arguments one wants to make against voting for Trump, in reality that’s not a very good one.  Because the quality of a person isn’t in whether he or she succeeded or failed in every endeavour.  Rather, it rests in what kind of person emerged from the success or failure.

          So the mindset of reaching for excellence and self-improvement, but avoiding comparing oneself to others – in other words, reaching for one’s Personal Best – is a healthy thing.  But the competitive nature of the world is a fact.  So how does one square the need to acknowledge that the world is competitive and that you won’t always win, with the need to count your blessings?

          And here’s where I get to say, it isn’t rocket science.  First of all, you give yourself credit for what you achieve, rather than berating yourself for what you did not.

          Setting lofty goals is a good thing.  If you achieve everything you’ve set as your goal, to the degree you set your sights on, chances are you aren’t thinking big enough.  On the other hand, if you never achieve what you’ve aimed for then you’re setting unrealistic goals.  Your inner self knows if your goals weren’t lofty enough.  And when they’re too ambitious.  So finding the balance between the two extremes – setting goals that challenge you, but which are realisable with effort – is an important skill to master.  But even before that, do the goals you’ve set, support the Core Values that you’ve established for yourself?  If not, it’s hard to get excited about them.  They have to be your goals, and not somebody else’s.

          Goals shouldn’t be pipe dreams.  For example, I’d love to win the lottery as much as the next guy.  And I do occasionally buy a chance to win it.  But if my sense of having succeeded in life depends on my winning the lottery, then I’ve set myself up for failure. 

          Likewise, if my sense of having succeeded in life depends on me besting someone else, then I’m likely also setting myself up for failure.  And I’m going to end up with a sense of failure over a goal that was patently unworthy to begin with.  Why would my own sense of self-worth depend on someone else?  Why would I draw my own self-worth by seeing someone else fail?  Listen, I’m not saying you should hang your head in shame for wishing ill on someone else, as every one of us does at least briefly.  Rather, when we do think that way – and I say when, because we will – we need to transcend it quickly and move on to more positive thoughts about doing the best we can with the hand we’ve been dealt.  But comparing ourselves to others, is nothing but a dead-end street.  Don’t waste your life – and squander your chances for Happiness – by falling for it.