IF WORRY COMES to your heart, take it as a warning from God who loves you. Examine your deeds and take counsel with those whose advice you seek. When you have fulfilled God’s will, trust God and your serenity will return.
—RABBI MENACHEM MENDEL LEFFIN (1749–1826)
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Serenity Prayer
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
I have a crass joke I make sometimes that everyone I love is either in a 12 step program or should be. It’s just true that a lot of people in my life have addiction issues. A truer and more charitable thing to say is that we really all would benefit from the 12 steps in some capacity. This week I had to step 1 myself: I had to admit that I am powerless and that my life is unmanageable. While alcohol may not be the thing that is making my life unmanageable, step 1 still applies.
I had a moment last night when I realized I’d forgotten to attend a pretty important event. I didn’t mean to skip it. I didn’t have an emergency come up. Instead, I completely lost track of the day and the obligations I had made for that day.
I got a sweet text message from a colleague telling me they missed me. I panicked. My stomach lurched. My palms started sweating. I said out loud “oh my God…”
There are many reasons why missing this particular thing mattered to me. Big reasons (like I wanted to honor the and celebrate the person we were honoring) and small reasons (I felt like a shitty, irresponsible flake).
Panic is a strange sensation for me. I don’t have it often, but typically when I do, it comes from a catastrophic interpersonal experience that challenges my self-concept. Frankly, it’s often as the result of a romantic relationship ending. I remember my first panic attack, and it was when I missed a therapy appointment. I wasn’t late, I had no emergency or excuse. I just missed it. I was in nursing school at the time and I was prepping for my clinicals the next day. And when my therapist called to let me know I’d missed the appointment, she said some version of the fact that she was disappointed in me. That was completely intolerable to me, and my body reacted strongly. It became a weekly occurrence that my body revolted every Monday night before clinicals after that. My body did not trust that I could be accountable and responsible.
That was over 13 years ago. Today, at 35 years old, I realize that I am that same person. I’ve grown tremendously, but my body still reacts the same way when I feel the rug pulled out from under me. It’s disorientating. It changes the way I feel about myself fundamentally.
That was what happened last night. And I couldn’t figure out why it happened. How could I completely miss this big thing. How could I be so selfish to forget to show up for a colleague and mentor?
Here’s the amazing part: my people were able to reframe and help me understand what was at play here. In almost every example of my panic, it is indicative of me over-extending myself. I drop the ball when I have said yes too much, or unwisely, or without enough data. Essentially, my panic springs up when my life has become unmanageable.
I had spent the entire evening with my sister, prepping for her upcoming wedding. It was fun and bonding and exciting, but it was also all-encompassing. When I said “oh my God,” I was still with my sister, eating dinner at 9:30 after our marathon of preparation. My sister sat across her kitchen table from me, held my hands in hers and said very clearly:
I needed you this week. You showed up for me this week and let me take up a lot of space. When I was freaking out earlier this week, you took care of me.
It was powerful. And helpful. And true. She had needed me this week. I had showed up for her. It wasn’t that I was a failure, I was on deck for a lot of things, and inevitably, I dropped a ball or two.
This is the nature of an unmanageable life. The source of that unmanageability is different at different times, but for me it always looks the same:
`1) I miss obligations.
Usually small ones. I said I’d go to dinner with you. I miss a day at the gym. I forget to send a link I promised. These will start to pile up and get more frequent.
2) My house is a mess.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a tidy housekeeper, but there’s a difference between a few clothes on the floor and three loads of laundry on the floor by my washer. Or dishes that never end. Or shards of frisbee (thank you Levi) everywhere.
3) My work gets sloppy.
This one is difficult for me to admit to, but it’s true. I am flying by the seat of my pants, handling things only a day or even hours before they’re needed.
4) My spending goes crazy.
From the comfort of my couch or bed, I will buy all the things that I hope will correct all of my issues. The work out pants that will help me get to the gym. The closet organizer that will finally make me hang up my clothes. The home decor that will make me finally want to invite people over.
5) I start to isolate.
As items 1-4 start to accumulate, I get more and more shut down. I start to punish myself by avoiding other people. I start to try to spare other people from my inadequacy. I freeze, sinking deeper into brainless media and scrolling. Avoiding the confrontation with my realities.
So here we are. My life is a little unmanageable right now. Luckily, it’s not in an insurmountable way. I don’t think my job is at risk. My credit cards can get paid down over the next several months. My friends and family will allow me to reintegrate into their lives. My house will get clean(ish).
So where does Torah come into play here?
This week we read Ki Tissa. We learned about the shattered tablets. We learned about the golden calf. In my Torah study this week, we spent a lot of time wrangling with whether things can be holy or if only the things they represent can be holy. Were the tablets themselves holy or were the words on them holy or just the ideas that they held holy?
Towards the end of our study, one of our participants asked
What even is holiness? What does it mean?”
This is when my rabbi and our fellow congregants explained that the root of the word we translate as holiness is ק-ד-ש. This root is translated as “to set apart.” That is what connects us with divinity. Intentionally setting apart. Whether it be in dress, in behavior, in language, or in values. Judaism specifically highlights the need to be separate. When we lose that separation, when we lose that intentionality and space, our lives become unmanageable. That is where I find myself right now. So saturated and sodden, that I feel weighed down, unable to separate even days from one another. Responsibilities bleed together. Obligations merge into a primordial soup of dread and chaos. It’s time for me to call upon orderliness. To find some separation to make space for holiness.
The mussar teaches us that each soul trait is associated with benefits and problems. Taken in either extreme, a soul trait is maladaptive. So as I launch into putting order back into my life over the next hours, days, and weeks I will keep the wise words of Alan Morinis close:
Without order, you are bound to be wasting something—whether time, resources, things themselves that get lost, relationships, and so on. Not wasting is a Jewish ethical principle.17 Any management consultant will tell you that you have to get organized if you want to be effective, but our concern goes far beyond that. Our concern is how living in chaos throws up impediments to being attentive to the divine will. And isn’t a life at the other end of the spectrum, which would be obsessively rigid, every bit as much an obstacle to spiritual living? Picture chaos, with stuff flying and piles of junk and cluttered thinking and a clanging ruckus: who could possibly hear the fragile voice of truth whispering in the midst of the tornado? And in contrast, but equally disabling, where order has been taken to the point of extreme inflexibility, even if you heard the divine will, would there be anything you could do to meld your own personal will to the will of God, so unbending would your ways have become?”
Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness
Typing this out is my first step to acknowledge my unmanageable state. Time to carve out some boundaries and find some room for holiness.
And You Shall Love 