This is a vulnerable one.

Life is funny. I was convinced that I was going to focus on discipline in the next several weeks. I assumed that the lack of “discipline“ being explicitly listed in my guiding text (Everyday Holiness, by Alan Morinis) was an oversight. Something to be worked around. Instead what I found, was that my draw towards “discipline” has a foundation in two other middot: responsibility and orderliness. I think the more important middot to focus on first is the concept of responsibility.

What am I responsible for and what does that look like? As long as I can remember I have been focused on how to be better. Look better, be better, show up better for myself and others.

The enneagram, a pop psychology personality categorization paradigm sorts me into a 3, otherwise know as the Achiever. I have a strong “wing” or secondary personality of 2, the Helper.

My sense of responsibility is rooted in a benevolent urge, but it can really manifest in a disordered and unhelpful way.

A joke I’ve once said is that a huge difference in myself and my sister is that my sister walks into a crowded room and feels like “you’re welcome! I’m here! I’m so glad to be here.” On the other hand I walk into a crowded room and say “I’m so sorry. I’ll get out of the way as soon as possible. Thanks for allowing me to be here.”

I’m realizing now it’s not a very funny joke. It’s a sad reflection on my self worth and my feeling of responsibility. I feel like it is my responsibility in a crowded space to minimize and manage myself so as to not to disrupt other people’s experience. I don’t want to lie and say I feel that way in all spaces, but in new experiences it is a general rule for me. Morinis cuts this way of thinking off at the knees immediately. On the first page of his chapter on responsibility he says:

“It is important to look for a way to embrace responsibility that is wholesome, positive, and nurturing to the soul— and not with guilt, because guilt is none of those things.” Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness, Chapter 21

I think this is why focusing on compassion and self-compassion was an important place for me to start in this journey.

Morinis looks at the root of the Hebrew word for responsibility, achrayut, and acknowledge that the root may be from the word for “after”. Using this interpretation, responsibility is the recognition that what I do and say has an “after.” It impacts what happens next. We are co-creators with God. Achrayut may also be from the root for “other” which harkens to the interconnectedness of my future with yours.

At its best, a sense of responsibility makes me show up with intention for my students, my patients, my coworkers, my family, friends, and partner. It helps me center another person when they are in need. It pushes me towards excellence and achievement.

Annnnddd…..

It is the intense sense of responsibility that has had me a little concerned for my mental health recently. I have noticed myself ruminating on my failures recently. Ruminating on the ways I’ve negatively impacted people. There’s a story from one Christmas morning that is haunting me. Yes, Christmas. I have an interfaith family. I was watching my pre-teen niece try on a brand new outfit she had gotten for Christmas and I was speechless. She looked so grown up. Gorgeous! But I was seeing her clearly for the young woman she was becoming. It was shocking and I found myself saying something clunky like “wow! That is a very grown up dress!” My eyebrows were in my hairline. My mom and my sister were right beside me. We were all in shock. My niece went *bright* red and began crying. I had embarrassed her and I felt awful about it.

In the next moment, my brother shouted above her tears “Ignore them, _______! They’re just jealous because you look so much better than them.”

I froze. I felt double the shame. Shame that I had made my niece cry and now shame that my brother saw me as a jealous cruel aunt.

I have had that story on repeat in my brain for weeks now. I have felt a huge sense of responsibility in some dysfunction in my family for as long as I can remember. This story is just one in a pile that my busy mind sorts through when it wants to remind me of how I have failed my responsibility in my family.

I also think about the responsibility I take on at work. I pride myself on thinking constantly about how my actions impact my patients, coworkers, and students. I cannot let go of the typo on the PowerPoint. I cannot let go of the criticism I overhead from the employee at the clinical site. I cannot let go of the one comment (among many positive ones) that a student leaves on evaluations.

I look at my house, my finances, my volunteer duties, and I am spinning. I am drowning. I am consumed. My mind struggles to let go.

Many times a day, I find myself distracted by something awkward I’ve said that may have hurt someone. Or the way I shouldn’t be resting because I should be fulfilling this or that need.

My mom found a stack of letters from me from across a wild range of my childhood in which I am wrestling with my inability to fulfill my responsibilities. I’ve gone so far as to worry that I may need to take on a medication or some targeted therapy to correct this trait. This is a middot I struggle with.

Rabbi Peter Shacktman writes that it is critical to

understand the potential for acharayut, like all middot, to be taken to an extreme, by calling to mind the important distinction between responsibility and guilt. While responsibility leads to greater wholeness, guilt— neurotic, and often narcissistic-instead engenders anxiety. Guilt is a source of spiritual negativity, a potentially debilitating state of being. 

My mind tells me that I need to take MORE responsibility when in actuality, I may need to take in the counter balancing trait of the middot: humility.

So that will be the next middot I study.

A little salve I am applying to my wounds in the interim is this poem by someone named Safire Rose. I found it on my meditation app a few years ago and funnily enough, my mother just found it on the very same app a few weeks ago and recommended it to me. So here is my offering to you as I begin my work towards humility:

She Let Go

by Safire Rose

She let go.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice.

She didn’t read a book on how to let go.

She didn’t search the scriptures.

She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back.

She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go.

She didn’t journal about it.

She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.

She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.

She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.

She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.

She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.

She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.

She didn’t call the prayer line.

She didn’t utter one word.

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…