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By Alan Morinis Another day, the sky falls again. A Wall Street firm fails, General Motors goes into bankruptcy, home foreclosures hit record levels, more people lose their jobs, and the fall-out shows up in rates of alcoholism, domestic abuse and suicide. Remember when people used to say (and believe): “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” That doesn’t bode well for the future, does it? We are living in such a difficult time, and as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow, it is sure that bad news will arrive on my porch with a thud. In this context, how truly useful I find it to have a connection to a tradition that helps me see the present in a longer historical context. We are not the first generation to face such trying times, and, though it may be hard to believe, other times have been far worse. We can at least learn from those who went this way before us. Useful though that gift of tradition may be, what I find even more helpful is to be able to see the present through a lens that reveals the larger ahistorical context of our lives. At the same time as we live within history, we also live spiritual lives according to templates that are independent of the particulars of that history. From one perspective, our lives appear to be riven by trials that always have a cast of specific, named characters and unique situations. But from another viewpoint, being human involves being tested. The particulars are only the way in which the underlying pattern gets acted out. As an analogy, imagine a game, in which we see one person chasing another person, or one person trying to get a ball past another person. At a deeper and invisible level, we find the rules of the game that make sense of particulars that are being acted out on the field. That we are tested in life is one of the rules of the game (though here I drop the analogy because life is not a game, and the suffering that can come with life’s trials is as real as can be). Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto lived in the 18th century and so he knew nothing of sub-prime mortgages or Chrysler cars, but he did know the rules of the game, about which he wrote:
Rabbi Luzzato, also known as the Ramchal, helps us see that being human means that we get tested. What’s distinctive about the present onslaught of trying circumstances is not that there is an abundance of trials, but only that there is a disproportionate number coming as bad news. When things are going very well (in the country or in your life), there will be just as many tests. In fact, the tests brought on by success can be even more difficult than those brought on by conflict or lack. But whatever the particulars and from whichever side the tests may come, we need to see that come they will. Being tested is just a reality of being human. The mishnaic text Pirkei Avot locates the archetype of the tested individual in the Torah: “Asara nisyonot nitnasa Avraham Avinu” “Our ancestor Avraham was tried with ten tests (nisyonot)” (5:3). The commentators differ to some extent as to which events are to be included among the ten, but all agree that Avraham was tested. That the tests faced by Avraham have something to teach us for the sake of our own lives is asserted by the Rambam in his Guide for the Perplexed (3:24), where he wrote: “Wherever the notion of test or trial is mentioned in the Torah, its purpose is to indicate to people how they ought to act or think... The test serves as a model to others who might learn from it and follow its example…” The Ramban, also known as Nachmanides, who followed in the next century, pinpoints the lessons we are meant to draw by revealing that “God caused Avraham to undergo tests to allow him the possibility of translating his latent spiritual potential into concrete reality” (comment to Genesis/Bereishit 22:1). Avraham is known to have been the paragon of chesed, lovingkindness. It is said that he had a special tent made that opened on all four sides, so he could look in all directions to see if anyone was approaching to whom he could offer hospitality. That aspect of Avraham’s inner being was whole from a young age, and, as a result, the ten tests he came to face were all trials of his gevurah, his strength, which is the soul-trait that counter-balances chesed. If he was going to become whole in himself, as opposed to just in one trait in himself, he would need to develop the aspects of himself that were latent but had not yet been made manifest. What we have learned here so far from the Mussar tradition provides us with three important lessons. There are more, to be sure, but we can benefit from underlining these three primary lessons:
This perspective will help prepare you to face the tests that appear in your own life. Buried within those trials you can find a message about a particular inner trait (a middah) in which you have the potential to grow, as Avraham had the potential to grow in gevurah [strength]. In many cases, what makes the situation a test is the very fact that it is hitting you in a middah where you have the potential to grow. Put someone else in exactly the same situation, and it would be no test at all because their middot are calibrated differently. So it is that impatient people find long line-ups wherever they go, and the world of a lustful person is populated by people wearing provocative clothing. Reality, including its tests, is not objective, but is experienced through the interplay of the objective and the subjective. We can see that the test is not just an unfortunate set of circumstances; rather, it marks out a pathway of personal growth that heads in the direction of inner wholeness. No doubt that path will not always be pleasant; these are tests, after all, and most of us would prefer to stay right where we are, thank you very much, willingly giving up growth for the sake of comfort and ease. Unfortunately, we need to know that that’s not an option. Tests come, and they can only be passed or failed. You can grow or you can retreat, but staying right where you are is not an option that life provides. We are here to become whole. Everything else is context, or playing field, if you will. The entire Mussar tradition can be understood as a training regimen that prepares us for the tests we will face in our lives. What I have touched on here is a perspective that, once understood, will give you every reason to want to investigate and internalize the practical lessons in growing toward wholeness that Mussar provides. Why? Because then you will face your tests better prepared, which will give you a much higher likelihood of passing them and moving closer to the goal of wholeness, and all that that entails. |
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