March 2, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Terumah
February 25, 2023 — 4 Adar 5783
Will Everything Be OK?
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Will everything be OK? Will all the things that I am worrying about be OK? Will all the things you are worrying about be OK? Will all the things we are worrying about be OK?
I would love to believe the premise of a children’s story by Anna Dewdney with an evocative title–Everything Will be OK. The plot is that a little bunny worries about little things, like getting the wrong kind of sandwich for lunch; medium things, like losing a kite; and big things, like missing family. In each case the bunny wonders will everything be OK, and in each case the answer is yes, everything will be OK.
This book resonates for me because it gives voice to an inchoate anxiety that many of us feel, and to a question that many of us ask: Will everything be OK? What do we do with this question that never goes away? And what do we do when the real answer to the question, if we are being honest with ourselves, is no.
That happens to all of us. Our health, or the health of somebody we love, is not OK. Somebody we love is struggling with mental illness, which can be a formidable, sometimes seemingly intractable foe. Not OK. A spouse loses their partner and now lives a much lonelier life. Not OK. Somebody we love dies young, and our world is shaken. Not OK. Somebody loses their job and has to deal with the uncertainty of now what do I do, and the resultant financial anxiety. Not OK. Relational stress and conflict. Not OK. It’s great when the problem gets solved, and everything is OK, but what happens when that does not happen?
That is the situation for the Israelites in the middle of the Book of Exodus. After the Exodus, the Splitting of the Sea, and Standing at Sinai, they are not OK. They are hungry. They are thirsty. They are hot and bothered. Where are we going, and when are going to get there? They miss their routine. Why did you ever take us out of Egypt? They are so not OK that they build and worship the golden calf, after which there is a civil war commanded by God where the Levites kill 3,000 Israelites.
The Exodus narrative sends an important message: that we have never fully and finally arrived. We are never fully and finally OK. Even after all the miracles, signs and wonders God did for them, our ancestors are not OK. There is a fluidity, there are ups and downs, there are great highs and even lower lows, built into the human condition. What do we do when everything is not OK?
A recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain offers a helpful move. When things are not OK, stand back and ask ourselves: what are the larger purposes of my life? How can this pain be reframed in a context where there is some larger purpose that can redeem this pain?
The podcast host Shankar Vedantam interviews Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow on the positive impact that having a sense of purpose can have in our lives. Burrow defines purpose as directionality: that we are going somewhere, building something aspirational and inspirational. Cultivating a sense of purpose enables us to be what Anthony Burrow calls “even keel.” We are more unflappable. We have more equanimity as we face the highs and lows of life. When the highs happen, we take them in stride. When the lows happen, we take them in stride. Focus on a larger purpose yields peace of mind.
Burrow tells the story of an experiment. Two groups of volunteers were asked to climb a very steep hill. At the base of the hill, before they started the climb, they were asked to write something. One group was asked to write about something random and inconsequential: a movie they had recently seen. The other group was asked to write about their sense of purpose in life. When they got to the top of the hill, the results were striking. The people who wrote about the random movie found the climb steep and exhausting, they complained about the effort it took to get up that hill. The people who wrote about their sense of purpose hardly noticed the climb. They were literally energized by their purpose.
What is the why of my existence, and how can that why help cushion the blows of my existence? Shankar Vedantam quotes Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, as follows:
The lesson one could learn in Auschwitz…was: Those who were oriented
toward a meaning to be fulfilled by them in the future were most likely to
survive. And this has been confirmed afterwards by American Navy and
army psychiatrists in Japanese prison of war camps, the orientation towards a future,
towards a task, a personal task waiting for them to be fulfilled in their future or
another person whom they were loving to be met again, this was what was decisively upheld
in these people. The orientation beyond oneself, you see the question was not just survival,
but there had to be a why of survival.
There has to be a why of survival. There has to be a why we are here. There has to be a purpose. When we cultivate that purpose, that will help sustain us through the inevitable periods in every life when things are not OK.
Which leads us back to our portion this morning. Things are not OK for the Israelites after the Golden Calf and the civil war. They needed a new purpose for a new chapter. The second half of the Book of Exodus gives it to them: v’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, God says, build me a tabernacle, that I might dwell among the people. The Israelites got their purpose: each person was to give their gift of energy and talent to build a sacred and beautiful space so that they could all feel the presence of God. After the Golden Calf and the civil war, their shared building project helps them regain their even keel.
That was biblical Israel. What about us? When we are not OK, what is our new why?
For me, now, this is not an academic teaching. This is as real as life itself. For as long as I have known Shira, which is 40 years, my father-in-law has been my father in love has been my father. And now, as we go to Israel every month or so, it’s not OK. He is not OK. So we are working on cultivating a whole new purpose: to be with him where he is, how he is, for as long as he is; to let him know how much we love him and how his teachings will guide us forever, how he will always be our north star; to be with his Israeli children and grandchildren who are with him every day and support them in his care; to affirm the infinite value of life in the presence of our beloved father’s mortality.
This is Shira’s and my work now. We all have our new work when things are not OK. When we can find our new purpose, when we can articulate our new why, we won’t feel the hill we climb, we will feel the purpose we are climbing towards, and that will make everything a little more OK. Shabbat shalom.