The Power to Lift Up, Not to Fall In

When Someone Comes to You A person is in a hard place. His mind feels small and narrow. The pressure won’t let up. His heart is heavy. His head is in a fog. He goes to a friend and starts talking. Or a wife turns to her husband and tells him everything. She talks. She pours it all out. What does she need from him? Our natural instinct says: Feel what she feels. Be like her. Fall into the pain together with her. Isn’t that what empathy is? But stop for a moment. Suppose she finishes talking, and now you are broken too. You are in shock too. You are in the same hard place she is. What does she have now? Two people stuck in the place where it all began. You didn’t get out, and you didn’t manage to bring her out. This is the question everything starts from: what really counts as “help”? Mind and Heart: Two Ways to Connect The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, lays down a deep foundation: the mind rules over the heart. This is more than a fact about psychology. It is a way of doing the inner work. The powers of the mind are wisdom, understanding and awareness, and real change comes from them. The emotions are love, awe, joy and sadness. They are beautiful and true powers. But they are born from the mind, and they are meant to be guided by it. Sometimes a person touches a friend’s pain through emotion alone. He feels it, he identifies with it, and he gets swept away. There is honesty and humanity in that. But emotional identification on its own is not a bridge. It is a swamp. You both sink. You are both swallowed up. And nobody is standing high enough to reach out a hand. Real influence comes from a different place, from awareness. In Hebrew, the word for awareness is the same word the Torah uses when it says, “And Adam knew Eve, his wife.” Awareness is the power of deep connection, of joining yourself to another person from the inside. But it is a connection of the mind and the inner self, not an emotional slide. Awareness lets the one who helps understand the other person’s situation deeply. He can sense how real the other person’s distress is without being inside it himself. To understand is the work of the mind. To feel is the work of the emotions. The difference between them is the whole difference between helping and sinking together. The Parable of the Doctor Think of a surgeon. The patient lies before him with his heart racing and his eyes full of fear. If the doctor were gripped by the very same panic, his hands would shake. His judgment would be clouded. The operation would be in danger. Heaven forbid that the doctor should be indifferent to his patient. He cares about him. He is there for him. But he keeps a settled mind, a broad and clear mind, and that is exactly what lets him heal. So it is with everyone who truly helps others. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, writes that the righteous leader goes down to understand the root of people’s souls and to know their distress. He does not do it to fall along with them. He does it to lift them up. This is “a descent for the sake of a higher ascent.” It is a descent of understanding, not a descent of falling. For the Young Married Man and the Working Man You are a young married man, and you come home. Your wife is having a hard time. A child is struggling with something. Something is weighing on her. She starts talking to you. Your job is not to fall into her pain, even if every instinct you have pulls you there. Your job is to be a pillar of stability. Not a cold and distant pillar. Just the opposite. Be close. Be present. Listen. But do it from a place of a broad, clear mind. Ask a question. See the matter clearly. Hold the vessel so it doesn’t spill. When you go to a holy leader, a rabbi or a wise counselor, you don’t want him to collapse together with you. You want him to understand. To understand truly, deeply, with his mind. And from the strength of his understanding, to help you stand up. Our Sages teach: “Do not judge your friend until you have reached his place.” Reach his place through your awareness, your recognition, your understanding. Not through your own fall. The Hand That Lifts This is one of the secrets of the bond between a follower and his Hasidic master. The master is not one more follower who suffers along with the follower. The master is a source of a broad, clear mind. From that broadness he listens, he understands, and he gives the follower what he truly needs: not a partner in falling, but a hand that lifts. Each one of us is called to be that kind of master for the circle around him: at home, with his children, with his friend. To be strong enough to lift.