Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
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Tragedies aren’t the time to question your faith; they are the time to implement your faith.
We are currently going through the most horrific and painful time I can remember. We cannot just be victims and passive spectators in our lives letting the circumstances dictate us. We have to take action to address the internal and external challenges we are facing.
Here are some of the thoughts I am focusing on to spiritually deal with this traumatic time.
Sit with your feelings and experience them. Experience your pain, anger, helplessness, fear, sadness, worry.
Don’t fight your feelings, make decisions based on them, form beliefs based on them, react to them, express them in a harmful (to yourself or others) way; don’t let them dictate your life.
Just sit, breathe deeply and make space to feel those feelings.
Just validate and be with the emotion - “This is how I feel now.”
Express them in a healthy way - cry, share them with close supportive people, creative expression through art/journaling/music.
Thoughts need to be dealt with in a different way to emotions.
With thoughts we need to control which ones to engage in by identifying if they are healthy and useful or not. Our thoughts create, build and perpetuate our emotions.
For example, imagining terrible scenarios and playing them out in your mind is not helping you or the situation. (Planning for possible eventualities is useful.) Trying to make sense of it or work out who is to blame (unless it’s in order to make sure it doesn’t happen again) isn’t helping.
Once we have identified thoughts that aren’t helping the situation, nor helping us grow or feel better - we have three choices. We often use the analogy of a bus. When you realise you are on the wrong bus you can either:
The challenge is to become aware of when you are engaging in thoughts that are not serving a purpose, know that you don’t have to be thinking these things right now and consciously choose to let the thoughts go.
Notice the thought bus, take a deep breath, loosen your neck and shoulders, say “I’m choosing to get off this bus now.” Choose more positive things to fill your mind. Just like you change the cd in the car if you don’t like the music, change the cd playing in your head.
After a while you’ll become more conscious of when you are riding the wrong bus and be able to get off more quickly. At some point you’ll be conscious enough to just let the bus pass without even getting on it in the first place. Obviously, if you need to experience the emotion - pain, sadness - then that’s okay. Feel what you feel. Just learn to let go of the mental commentary that is exacerbating the pain.
While being totally open to experiencing our painful emotions, we don’t want the situation to dictate and define our lives. We are not helpless spectators, we are powerful participants, or even managers of our lives.
We must keep functioning in a healthy way. Self care. Eat well, exercise, meditate, hot baths, lavender oil, nice music, healthy self expression.
Keep on living your life as much as you can. Go to work, see friends. Not only do we not let our pain define us, we use it to take action. Do something that can help the situation. Donate money and supplies. Volunteer time and skills. Educate people, pray, learn Torah and perform mitzvahs and acts of kindness with intention.
Tragedies like this can really shake someone’s faith. How could God let this happen? Especially now after the entire High Holiday season and the joy of Sukkot. It makes absolutely no sense.
Tragedies aren’t the time to question your faith; they are the time to implement your faith. That is the challenge of integrating your trust in God. When it doesn’t make any sense, we still believe that there is a valid reason and positive meaning behind it.
It presently doesn’t make sense - so don’t try to make sense out of it. You can’t make sense out of something that doesn't make sense. This is where your trust in God comes in. And remember, that although from our finite perspective we can’t make sense out of it, we know that in the infinitely bigger picture it makes sense and will lead us where we need to get to.
The Jewish People are the most formidable nation on the face of the earth. We have been battered throughout the generations and we are still here, impacting the world. We won’t be victims. We will get through this and we will become stronger. In the war of darkness versus light, light always wins in the end. We firmly stand on the side of good.
Jewish unity is crucial. We must put our differences aside and come together - left/right, religious/secular. We can love and respect each other even if we have differences of opinion.
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Thank you. I needed that tonight.
Beautiful, practical, so mnay of us need directions as to how manage the tangled and paralizing emotions we are feeling now. Thank you
Very good advice. Common sense and practical. Thank you for posting.