Who Holds the Hammer? On Trusting in People

“Cursed is the man who trusts in people…” (the prophet Jeremiah) Opening Picture this. Someone said something to you. Just one sentence. Maybe a small remark. Maybe they ignored you. Maybe it was only a cold look. And suddenly everything falls apart. Your stomach turns. Your head fills up. You find yourself going around and around in that one thought for hours. Angry. Hurting. Insulted to the depths of your soul. Stop for a moment. Ask yourself: who did this to you? Who Is Holding the Hammer? The natural reaction is to look outside yourself. He hurt me. She ignored me. They didn’t appreciate me. But the prophet Jeremiah sees it in a completely different way. He says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in people, who makes mere flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from Hashem.” Notice something. The verse does not say, “Cursed is the one who hits you.” It says, “Cursed is the man who trusts.” The curse is not about what others did to you. The curse, if we can even call it that, is about what you did. It is about your choice to place the key to your inner world in someone else’s hands. When you give another person the power to decide what you are worth, you have handed him a hammer. Then, when he swings that hammer, don’t be surprised by the broken pieces. This “curse” is not a punishment sent down from heaven, from the outside. It is a natural result, almost a mechanical one, of an inner structure you built with your own hands. “Who makes mere flesh his strength”: he took the opinion of “flesh,” of ordinary human beings, which is fleeting and slippery, and made it his source of strength and his sense of importance. And the verse goes right on: “And whose heart turns away from Hashem.” He cut himself off from the Source that is steady and eternal, the Source that never changes. Two Sides of the Same Coin But there is an even sharper new insight here, and it deserves our attention. A person who is hurt when others ignore him tends to think the cure is getting compliments. If only people would tell him how good he is, how successful, how nice, the pain would go away. And it’s true: when the compliments come, he feels good. Alive. Whole. But this is exactly the same addiction. It is only dressed up in the clothes of joy. If another person has the power to lift you up, he also has the power to knock you down. Both sides grow from the same root: trusting in people. Needing praise and being hurt by insult are not opposites. They are twin brothers, children of the same dependence. Think of Haman, the villain of the Book of Esther. All his greatness, all his honor, all his wealth were nothing to him. In his own words: “All this is worth nothing to me.” All of it melted away because of one Jew who would not kneel or bow down to him. A person who builds himself on the opinions of others always stays in their hands. The Turning Point: Taking Back the Keys So what is the solution? The prophet goes right on to say: “Blessed is the man who trusts in Hashem.” Blessed, not cursed. And what is the difference? It is not that this person feels nothing. It is not that he lives coldly cut off from the world. It is that he is anchored somewhere else. He is “like a tree planted by the water.” His roots drink from a source that does not depend on the rain and sunshine of other people. Here Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, gives a deep explanation. A person can come to understand that the praise and insult that come from others are only “garments.” They are the vessels through which Hashem’s personal providence, His guidance of every detail, reaches him. Once he sees this, the person who hurt you is not the real one behind it. He is only a stick in the hand of the One who strikes. So there is no point in being angry at the stick. And there is no point in hanging your self-worth on the “stick” either. Everything comes from one place. This is the inner work. It is not to stop hearing what other people think. It is to stop handing them the key. Take the hammer back into your own hands. Better still, put it down completely, because you don’t need it.