After the Blow: Taking Ownership

Opening The Book of Lamentations says: “Why should a living person complain? Let a man complain about his own wrongs.” And right after that: “Let us search our ways and examine them, and return to Hashem.” Two verses, two movements. One complains. The other searches and acts. Between them is less than a moment. And that is the whole question. Picture a Jew sitting in front of you. He is from Jerusalem. He owns a business, he is a father, he is a family man. Some blow has struck him. Maybe a partner betrayed him. Maybe a child is going down a bad road. Maybe his income dried up without warning. The pain is real. He is not making anything up. And what does he do? He becomes the lawyer for his own standstill. He builds the case. He proves the injustice. He replays the film over and over. He may even be completely right. But while he is busy proving who hit him, life is asking a different question: “So what now?” The Foundation: Two Stages, One Responsibility We need to draw a basic distinction between two completely separate stages. The first stage is the blow itself: the failure, the betrayal, the door that closed. That is not always in your control. Maimonides, the great medieval sage, also wrote that free choice does not mean all of reality bends to our will. Our choice lies in our character traits and in how we respond. The second stage is “the moment after.” It is the moment when you are still holding the steering wheel, even after the crash. There lies all of your responsibility, and all of your strength. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, wrote in one of his letters that a hard test is not a punishment. It is a question. Through the events of a person’s life, Hashem turns to him and asks: “What will you do with this?” So the right question after any blow is not “Why did this happen to me?” It is “What does this ask of me?” A Small Mind and a Grown Mind Hasidic teaching has names for these two levels of response: a small, narrow mind and a grown, expanded mind. The “small one” asks: “Who did this to me?” It is just like the Bible’s contrast between a “child” and a “man.” He is sunk in finding out who hurt him. As for the grown man, in the words Rabbeinu Yonah, the medieval sage of Gerona, used: “A righteous person falls seven times, and gets up.” The righteous person does not ask how many times he fell. He gets up. That “gets up” is the grown mind’s answer to the question “So what now?” It is not comfort. It is a command. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha, a sage of the Mishnah, said: “Do not trust yourself until the day you die.” In other words, the choice is always open. There is always one more “day,” always one more possible step forward. Being stuck is not a decree. It is a choice. Complaining or Giving Birth Here is the sharpest new idea. Complaining means explaining, justifying, and blaming the circumstances. It gives quick relief. That is understandable, because pain needs somewhere to go. Rabbi Schneur Zalman explains in the Tanya that heavy sadness is called “impure.” This is not because the pain is not real. It is because sadness paralyzes and gives birth to nothing. The same is true of complaining. Even a justified complaint is barren if it becomes your permanent home. It makes the descent permanent and refuses the ascent. Responsibility is the opposite. It asks, “What does this ask of me?” It is an action that gives birth to a new reality. This is exactly what “a descent for the sake of a higher ascent” means. The descent itself is not the problem. The refusal to rise is the problem. The ascent depends on the “gets up” that comes after the “falls.” In the words of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement: “Wherever a person’s thoughts are, that is where he is, all of him.” If your thoughts are sunk in complaints about the past, that is where you are locked up: in the past. If your thoughts turn to “So what now?”, you are already moving. You are already on your way. Closing Real strength does not show itself when life becomes fair. It shows itself the moment a person stops waiting for fairness and starts moving anyway. Your pain can explain you. It does not excuse you.