Inspiration and Disappointment
(or Why a Good Time Never Lasts)
The natural pathway of all
life experiences begins with inspiration and soon fades to disappointment. Let
us analyze this phenomenon and understand it.
Human consciousness and
human senses are tuned to an initial burst of sensitivity and then rapidly
decay into dullness. Sights, sounds, smells, even tactile stimuli are felt
sharply at first and then hardly at all - a constant sound is not registered;
one suddenly becomes aware that it was present when it stops! We are incapable
of maintaining the freshness of any experience naturally - only in the
dimension of miracle is that possible: the sacrificial bread in the Beis
Hamikdash, the Temple, remained steaming fresh permanently to manifest the
constant freshness of Hashem's relationship with the Jewish people. The natural
pathway is that things which are fresh become stale.
One of the Torah sources
for this idea lies in the sequence of events surrounding the exodus from Egypt.
At an extremely low point in our history, during the intense misery of slavery
in Egypt, literally at the point of spiritual annihilation, the Jewish people
were uplifted miraculously. Ten plagues revealed Hashem's presence and might, culminating
in a night of unprecedented revelation with the tenth. This spiritual high was
amplified by many orders of magnitude at the splitting of the sea - there the
lowliest of the Jewish people experienced more than the highest prophet
subsequently. And suddenly, once through the sea, they were deposited in a
desert with many days of work ahead of them to climb to the spiritual status of
meriting the Sinai experience, the giving of the Torah. Mystically, a desert
means a place of intense death-forces, a place of lethal ordeals. No water
means no life. (And we see later the potency of the ordeals which faced them in
the desert.)
What is the meaning of
this pattern? The idea is that in order to save the Jewish people in Egypt
outside help was necessary. Hashem appeared and elevated us spiritually
although we did not deserve it intrinsically, we had not yet earned it. But
once saved, once inspired, once made conscious of our higher reality, the price
must be paid, the experience must be earned, and in working to earn the level
which was previously given artificially, one acquires that level genuinely.
Instead of being shown a spiritual level one becomes it.
And that is the secret of
life. A person is inspired artificially at the beginning of any phase of life,
but to acquire the depth of personality which is demanded of us, Hashem removes
the inspiration. The danger is apathy and depression; the challenge is to fight
back to the point of inspiration, and in so doing to build it permanently into
one's character. The plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the sea are dazzling
beyond description, but then Hashem puts us in the desert and challenges us to
fight through to Sinai. In Egypt He demonstrates destruction of ten levels of
evil while we watch passively; in the desert He brings ten levels of evil to
bear against us and challenges us to destroy them.
This idea recurs
everywhere. Pesach occurs in Nissan - the zodiac of this month is the sheep, an
animal which is passively led. Next comes Iyar - the ox, an animal which has
its own wilful strength. And thereafter comes Sivan - twins, perfect harmony.
It is like a father teaching his child to walk: first the father supports the
child as he takes his first step, but then the father must let go; there is no
other way to learn, and the child must take a frightened and lonely step
unaided. Only then, when he can walk independently, can he feel his father's
love in the very moment which previously felt like desertion.
Unfortunately most people
do not know this secret. We are misled into thinking that the world is supposed
to be a constant thrill and we feel only half-alive because it is not. Let us
examine some applications of this fundamental principle.
* * *
In aggadic writings we are
told that the unborn child is taught the whole Torah in the womb. An angel
teaches him all the mysteries of Creation and all that he will ever need to
know in order to reach perfection, his own chelek (portion) in Torah. A lamp is
lit above his head, and by its light he sees from one end of the world to the
other. As the child is born, however, the angel strikes him on the mouth and he
forgets all that he has learned and is born a simple and unlearned baby. The
obvious question is: why teach a child so much and then cause all the teaching
to be forgotten?
But the answer is that it
is not forgotten; it is driven deep into the unconscious. A person may be born
with no explicit knowledge, but beneath the conscious surface, intact and rich
beyond imagination, is all that one wishes to know! A lifetime of hard work
learning Torah and working on one's personality will constantly release, bring
to consciousness, innate wisdom. Often when one hears something beautiful and
true one has the sensation, not of learning something, but of recognizing something!
A sensitive individual will feel intimations of his or her own deep intuitive
level often.
The pathway is clear - a
person is born with a lifetime of work ahead, spiritual wisdom and growth are
hard-earned. But the inspiration is within; you were once there! And that inner
sense of inspiration provides the motivation, the source of optimism and
confidence that genuine achievement is possible, even assured, if the necessary
effort is made.
A second application: a
characteristic feature of childhood, and relatively, of the teenage years, is
inspired optimism and the lack of a sense of limitation. Children believe that
they can become anything. The world is larger-than-life to a child, a child is
not oppressed by a limited sense of what is possible. A child has simply to be
exposed to almost any form of greatness (unfortunately, all too often physical
and meaningless) to begin fantasizing about becoming or achieving that same
thing.
However, later in life one
is lucky to have any inspiration left at all. Many adults wonder why life
seemed so rich when they were teenagers, why they could laugh or cry so richly,
so fully, back then; and why life seems so flat (at best) now. But the idea is
as we have described above. First comes a phase of unreal positivity, a charge
of energy. And then life challenges one to climb back to real achievement
independently.
* * *
A third application is to
be found in the ba'al teshuva world (ba'al teshuva describes a person who has
discovered a Torah-oriented way of life after living a more secular lifestyle).
Many ba'alei teshuva experience an unexpected and disturbing letdown. Often the
pathway is as follows. A young person discovers Torah, becomes inspired by a
Torah teacher, and begins to study. Every Torah experience, whether in learning
or in contact with the Orthodox world, is spectacular. Every text studied is
alive with significance, every Shabbos experience is high, and there is a phase
of euphoria. Somehow though, subtly, this changes and growth has to be sought.
Learning may be very difficult. Often the difficulties seem to far outweigh the
breakthroughs. Many are tempted not to persevere in learning. Of course this is
exactly the way it must be, real growth in learning comes when real effort is
generated. Just as physical muscle is built only against strenuous resistance,
so too spiritual and personality growth is built only against equivalent
resistance. A person who understands this secret can begin to enjoy the phase
of work; a maturity of understanding makes clear that the first phase was
artificial, it is the second phase which yields real development.
* * *
Perhaps the sharpest
application of this idea in modern Western society is in marriage. Marriage
today is to a large extent in ruins in the secular world. In many communities
divorce is more usual than survival of marriage, and even in those marriages
which do survive it is common to find much disharmony.
One of the prime factors
in this disastrous situation is the lack of understanding of our subject. Marriage
has two distinct phases: romance, and love. Romance is the initial, heady,
illogical swirl of emotion which characterizes a new relationship and it can be
extreme. Love, in Torah terms, is the result of much genuine giving. Love is
generated essentially not by what one receives from a partner, but by the
well-utilized opportunity to give, and to give oneself. The phase of romance
very soon fades, in fact just as soon as it is grasped it begins to die. A
spiritually sensitive person knows that this must be so, but instead of
becoming depressed and concerned that one has married the wrong person, one
should realize that the phase of work, of giving, is just beginning. The phase
of building real love can now flourish. In fact, in Hebrew there is no word for
"romance" - in its depth it is an illusion. However, in the world of
secular values, the first flash, the "quick fix", is everything.
"Love" is
translated as "romance" and when it dies, what is left? No-one has
taught young people that love and life are about giving and building, and so
the tendency is to give up and search for a "quick fix" elsewhere. Of
course, the search must fail because no new experience will last. Understanding
this well can make the difference between marital misery or worse and a
lifetime of married happiness. Jewish marriage is carefully crafted to
transition from initial inspiration, not to disappointment but to even deeper
inspiration. The menstrual separation laws are just one example - instead of
allowing intensity to dull into tired familiarity, phases of separation
generate new inspiration and the magic never fades.
Buy Living Inspired by Akiva Tatz at a special online price at www.targum.com
