Character

“Make His will your will, so that He may make your will like His will. Nullify your will to His will, so that He may nullify the will of others to your will.”

Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehuda the Prince (Pirkei Avot 2:4)

We all have stories that we tell ourselves. And those stories influence what we want out of life. Hidden within those stories are the keys that drive us to want what we want. The stories we tell ourselves are at the roots of our passions and our attitudes.

People tend to want to be the heroes of each of the stories. And with all of the stories each one of us has inside, we tend to want a lot of things for a lot of difficult-to-define reasons.

Sometimes our stories are self-contradictory. On one hand, we want to dominate to the point that we become ruthless and willing to lie cheat and steal in order to win – but, on the other hand, we also want to be perceived by others, and ourselves, as nice people. Both of those desires are connected to stories that are wired into the brain in one way or another whether through watching others, watching media, or through interpretation of past experiences.

The voice that transcends our storylines

And then there is the voice inside of us that transcends all of the mundane stories. The voice that tells us to do good for its own sake. It makes us want to believe that we really can be good. Good. Just good.

In college philosophy class, I remember learning about a debate about whether or not people have the ability to be truly altruistic. Truly good. A lot of people got pretty emotional in that class. People who believe in morality (not moral relativism but actual objective morality), tend to want to believe that we really have the capacity to be good. We’re heavily invested in the belief because without it, our religious stories and beliefs don’t seem relevant.

In Jewish thought, there is actually room to argue both options (Jewish joke goes, “2 Jews, 3 opinions”) because people are composed of more than one core program. The human make-up is composed of at least 2 different core programs that run simultaneously – the animal program and the divine program.

The human-animal

The human-animal is the part of the human whose desires and thought patterns are like those of an animal. The human-animal isn’t necessarily savage, just like animals can be calm and sweet so can the human-animal. But, on the same note, although the human-animal has the capacity to be sweet, it can’t be truly altruistic all by itself. It can do nice things but, just like animals, when they show consideration for others, they aren’t doing it out of pure-hearted goodness – they just enjoy the feeling of being nice.

And just like the human-animal can be trained to be nice and sweet, it can also be trained to be cruel. It’s just a matter of tapping into the right stories. Which is why humans are so subject to manipulation. That’s where The Beast comes from. Anyone who has ever wondered “what came over me” has experienced this.

The divine human

The other core program many humans have is the divine program, aka, the divine soul. Plugging into the divine soul enables humans the ability to transcend the human-animal. And to experience goodness in a whole different way. The divine soul transcends our subconscious story-bank. By plugging into the divine, spiritual aspect of ourselves, we can take steps to be other-worldly.

This divine voice transcends everything else. It’s both within you and beyond you. But it’s always accessible to you. Because, in a way, it is you – it’s the real you.

What do actress Mayim Bialik, singers Bob Dylan, Nissim Black, and Matisyahu, boxing champ Dmitry Salita, karate champion Reuven Sharf, the Queen of Kosher Jamie Geller, and the world’s most famous Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz z”tl have in common?

All of them have transformed their lives, at one time or another, through teshuva, the ancient Jewish secret to self-improvement.

Over the course of the past decades, the Jewish community has been seeing a remarkable uptick in people self-identifying as “Orthodox.” According to recent Pew research data, “17% of U.S. Jews ages 18 to 29 say they are Orthodox, compared with 3% of Jews ages 65 and older.” Suggesting that there is an increasing interest in Jewish lifestyle that, as defined by the Pew researchers, is “steeped in traditional religious observance.”

However, the concept of teshuva is not exclusive to any one group. It is a process that one can undertake to transform and re-take control of their own actions and their life. Teshuva requires introspection as well as action to lead to positive change and can be done by anyone at any time.

According to Jewish tradition, by doing teshuva thoroughly and with love, that bad thing that you would like to fix can even end up being considered a good thing, retroactively.

There are four basic steps:

1. Identify a bad thing/habit/behavior and decide to abandon it
2. Experience remorse over the action that you did that embodies that bad thing
3. Confess (to the victim or to G-d or, if applicable, both)
4. Make a commitment for the future

It is possible to dig much deeper into these four steps to understand them better, however, even if they are applied in a simple fashion, they still have the power to bring a person from a bad place to a super good place.

Over the years, people who work on these steps find them quite powerful, and although teshuva doesn’t make you perfect overnight, the process in-and-of-itself helps the person who does this become more self-aware, malleable, and gain a healthy sense of control over their trajectory.

The amount of time and effort each person puts into their teshuva process amounts to a personal journey. And, one of the remarkable things that is often noted about teshuva is its potency. According to the ancient Midrash, G-d encourages teshuva with the inspirational words, “My children, open for me an opening the size of a needle, through teshuva, and I’ll open doorways for you that are large enough that wagons can enter through.” (Midrash on Song of Songs 5:2)

The simple process described above is potent. However, it is important to note that there are aspects of the process that might require clarification once begun. And it’s important to note that it is possible to succeed the first time trying it. But it is also possible to fail. However, failing teshuva isn’t failure at all because it’s a process and, in the sage words of the Simply Tzfat band, “the purpose is in the process.”

“The flaw that prevents us from becoming better is that we accept our damaging habits as ‘okay.’ We’ve become blind to the fact that the repercussions of our bad actions are really our own doing. Causing confusion. However, at any moment, whenever anyone wants to open their eyes and do the right thing, the door is open for them.”

– Based on Orach Lchaim, written over 400 years ago

Bad habits are one of our worst enemies. But not for the obvious reason.

The obvious reason we don’t like to have bad habits is that they compel us to do things that we don’t want to do. This is true for times when we are still aware enough to define a bad habit as “bad.” But there is a much greater danger to bad habits, one that we become unaware of as it entwines itself as part of our self-image.

The acute danger of a bad habit is the moment that it becomes okay. In our minds, the habit actually becomes okay, sometimes without us noticing it, sometimes not. And at some point, we will even go as far as to say why that habit, once bad, is now laudable. Some bad habits are so problematic that they can’t be explained away easily — so we as individuals and as societies devise elaborate ideologies to justify and glorify these, once bad, habits.

Some bad habits came about as part of a coping mechanism. We thought we needed them at the time and now we can’t get rid of them.

Some bad habits we inherited during childhood and got used to them before having the chance to question their integrity.

And some habits we got carried away with because an outside influence flaunted them, making them look wonderful.

For the reader, your bad habits are probably different than mine, so I hesitate to air out my own dirty laundry here.

However, it is worth mentioning a few examples of bad habits that most people agree on, yet still seem to get glorified almost everywhere we look:

• Using other people for personal pleasure/gain
• Ignorantly shaming people without even knowing the whole story
• Murder – think violent music and crime movies
• Causing harm to oneself and others (physical and psychological)

Fortunately, it is always possible to become better and make things right. The proverbial door is always, at every moment, open. That’s not to say that the process is easy. And it’s not to say that anything can be fixed all at once. But the process can be started at any moment. And just by making the decision to be better, you win!

The only thing that can hold us back from starting, is our own hesitations – our own fears. What will I become if I decide to pursue a better path? Will I fail? Is this really the right thing to do? Will people reject me?

And even once we’ve started on a new path, it can be difficult to change our old habits. The more deeply-rooted the habit, the harder it is to change—and the more liberating.

But the first step is always there. That option to be better. The door is open.

The above post is based on the wise words of Orach Lchaim, written over 400 years ago.