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Showing posts from September, 2009

Do we have control, or don't we?

Life is messy and fundamentally out of our control. Over and over, we learn the lesson - I certainly do, pretty much on a daily basis - that efforts to control situations and other people are largely efforts in futility. The mind continually generates images of how things ought to turn out, and life continually turns out differently. Other people (and nature) stubbornly do what they feel is best, rather than what we are certain that they ought to do. How much energy do we expend each day - physical and emotional energy - on attempting to have life turn out the way we think it ought to - only to receive the humbling lesson that Life had other plans for us? The words of our prayerbook on the High Holidays, and on Shabbat as well, point to this truth - there is a bigger picture within which we live, which is beyond our control. And the liberating message is: that's okay - it doesn't have to be a problem. We can loosen our grip a little. Now paradoxically - and the rabbinic traditi