Parshat Ki Tavo: Half full or half empty? --- Better to put the glass down!

Ki Tavo 2015/5775

When did we last think of the image of the glass with water in it to the halfway point?

I happened on a new insight about this age old question of perspectives, half-full or half-empty, or the perspective of Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson who drew a person looking at the cup saying, “Hey, I ordered something else!”

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

Remember to put the glass down.

From what has happened this past year, what we’ve done, what we haven’t done, what we don’t know that we’ve done or not done; we are carrying a load, a load that we lug through every day except for the moments when we’re thinking about other things, when we’re at work or on the way our minds tend to lighten us up while we focus on the task at hand.  For that period of time, we put the glass down.

When God takes us out of Egypt, we put down the glass of slavery and oppression, and, at the same time, we pick up both the new privileges and responsibilities of being God’s people.  The joy we feel after escaping from the Egyptians at the Sea is a moment of blessing and the confirmation of our new status as free people. 

This week God asks us to continue to hear the Holy Voice from heaven and to receive blessings for acting on that voice.  But we are not in that moment of original freedom and celebration anymore, now, at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we’re celebrating the possibility of renewal, the hope for it, our plans to renew ourselves in the year that’s about to start.

We have seen many people, thousands upon thousands, fleeing from oppressive countries, risking their lives and the lives of their families to travel on rickety boats and unsafe vehicles to get from places like Syria, Eritrea, and Afghanistan to Europe where they want to start new lives.  Tragically, we have seen how these dangerous journeys can end.  They cannot put the glass down as easily as we can – in their travels they do not have the leisure to step out of the life altering journey. 

We may feel this way too, but our situation is less critical, for the most part, not a situation of life and death in the physical sense.  We extend our prayers to those who are in these dangerous transits from slavery to freedom and opportunity, and compel ourselves to feel at this time of year a sense of urgency.

A sense of urgency is critical at this time of year.  The Rebbe of Ger teaches that when we feel an openness in our hearts, a lightening of our load at the moment when we let go of our stresses and worries, that is good but only a remez only a hint from God that we are moving in the right direction. 

The reality is that it’s tough to put the glass down, for some reason we hold onto stress, worry, conflict and pain, magnify it bigger than it is, we hold grudges so long that we may never be able to know what life could be like with and after potential reconciliation, we even think about and possibly seek out people who have wronged us when we know that we’d do better to move on and stay away from their influences.  We may hold the glass in order to receive sympathy as the victim rather than taking back the initiative and deciding that we define who we are rather than our circumstances. 

I’ve had the privilege of meeting many people over the years who in the end succumbed to diseases like cancer, ALS, and others.  Many people like one woman I know with ALS who continue to live and work through the most painful transitions possible in this life, when the body breaks down around the mind and we have to rely on loved ones and others to help take care of even the most personal and basic tasks and needs that we tend to do without even thinking about them.  She maintains a position in town leadership, travels to see her daughter on the other side of the country, and smiles through it all.

She is an expert at putting the glass down.

May she inspire us to do the same.

Shabbat Shalom.