Mussar moments
One of the great gifts of studying and practicing Mussar is that it provides a lens through which to see more dimensions of what is showing up in our everyday experience. Many people move through life immersed in their experiences with no larger perspective. And then there is the approach taught by our Mussar teachers, who saw every interaction and experience as a chance to learn and practice.
Yesterday, as I pulled up to the airport, I got a text that my flight was cancelled. Of course, I stepped in to find a very long line of people at customer service. I was marooned at the airport for 4 hours until the next flight.
Today, I had my eye on his map and watched as the Uber driver made a wrong turn, making it much tighter for me to make my train. I jumped out of the car, ran through a train station unexpectedly (to me!) under redevelopment, and arrived on the platform to find that the train was an hour late.
These are just the daily realities that are showing up in front of me because I happen to be on a book tour. If I were settled at home, the anecdotes would be about the grocery store and the package delivery, or the boss and the deadline. This is what the ups and downs of mundane life are like.
Of course, all of it is a rich opportunity to work on myself. I watch the driver make the wrong turn and immediately the projected arrival time at the train station jumps from 10:55 to 11:02 and the train is scheduled to depart at 11:23, and I think to myself, here is where the middah of bitachon, trust, comes into play. It’s not that I trust that I am sure to make the train, it’s more that I know there will be another train and I will arrive how and when I can. It is my obligation to muster the best possible effort on my own behalf, but I need to recognize that I am not in charge of the show and it is not within my power to control the outcome.
And sometimes, on my travels, an experience takes me beyond my narrow focus on my own plans, delays and achievements.
The Uber I was sitting in when I got word that my flight was cancelled was being driven by a woman who answered my question about her place of origin by saying, “Iran.” The war in Iran has been raging and so my immediate response was to ask if she had family there. Yes, she answered, her mother and her father and siblings. But then, she added, they are not so important as the 11-year-old daughter she left behind when she emigrated three years ago.
“I’m so worried about my daughter in Tehran,” she said. And then she began to cry.
I’ve been worried about a flight that was cancelled by an airline that has 8 daily flights on that same route. Call that a problem? She, on the other hand, described what her parents had to do to get her daughter out of Tehran to a place in the countryside that was much less likely to be bombed.
And here I find myself in another situation that is pointing toward a middah. My heart is brimming with unquestioned empathy and compassion for this woman; there is no Mussar issue there. No, the middah that I find coming into sharper focus is discernment / tevunah. This human being, who happens to be driving an Uber that is taking me to the airport, is crying. And I struggle to discern for myself, is it ok to offer a hug to an Uber driver? Or even to put a comforting hand on her hand that is holding the steering wheel?
These are a few incidents from my recent days that bring into high relief the opportunity that exists in every encounter, every endeavour, every moment. Each situation is not just something that calls for action to solve the problem it contains; it is also an opportunity to learn something about myself and to put that lesson into practice in relation to the middah that I have come to see is implicated in the situation.
Have you run into any situations recently that summoned you to recognize and work on a middah that you could see was being challenged in that situation?
I've been planning an epic 5-day, ~60 mile hiking trek in rural Japan for the past 9 months. On the day we arrived to begin our hike, I tripped and injured my foot in the train station. The pain was so intense I blacked out momentarily, and my foot quickly became too swollen to fit in my shoe. I could barely limp, let alone contemplate an intense hike. But thank G-d for Mussar, because my reaction was that this was the perfect test of my patience, acceptance, and self-honor, all middot I've been working on. I was in a gorgeous place, staying in a lovely hotel, and if all I could do is enjoy Japanese food, that was enough. Before I started studying Mussar, I can't even imagine how devastated I would have felt. By some miracle, the swelling decreased while I slept so I could wear my hiking boots, and the pain was minimal enough that I decided to try hiking. I was a little slow at first, but I was able to complete the entire trek.
Like most everyone, I work a lot on patience. Recent challenges have included being interrupted by someone and feeling I’d lose my thread if I waited, as well as being slowed down by traffic while driving to an appointment I originally had time to get to. Patience in both cases initially meant a negative middah, pulling back from the focus and effort (and pleasure) I was devoting to speaking or driving, then tamping down frustration and potentially irritation at other people. But this negation required also a shift to new positive emotion and thought. With some success, I applied positive patience in the car, a feeling of rest or peace even though I was probably going to be late (I was thinking of peace in terms of shleimut, wholeness, that things would be o.k.). In the other case I applied a separate middah, enthusiasm, actively listening to what the other person had to say (with some humility that what I was saying wasn’t necessarily important).
I really appreciate the emphasis on discernment (tevunah), as a practice of seeing exactly how I can use a middah in a given situation and of recognizing which specific emotions and thoughts are called for, in addition to the moment of negation. Attaining discernment seems indeed the fundamental challenge in practicing Mussar.