Am I in Control - Really? Part 2 – Parshat Vayigash

It would really be nice if once we understood something, we could behave and think accordingly from that point on. We like to believe that we are intelligent human beings and that once we decide something we are always able to carry it out and remain consistent. Sometimes it actually works out that way. Yet that does not always happen. And then I find myself feeling hypocritical and failing.

I find some solace that I am not the only one with that flaw. Joseph's brothers, themselves each and every one God-fearing men, thought that they too were in control of destiny. They sold Joseph with intent to harm him and his dreams. But they didn’t 'get it'. Joseph tells them after he reveals himself to them – don’t be upset that you sold me into slavery. In fact, he tells them, God is the One who really sent me here – not you.1 The Abarbanel goes even further and says – you, dear brothers, were just the 'gophers'. It was all in God's plan so that there would be a way to survive the famine.

Last week, in the wake of a minor heart attack, I wrote here about a wonderful sense of surrender to Fate and to God's hands. It was an exhilarating  experience. Yet this week, just a week removed from that event, I no longer feel that level of surrender as a constant. And if I do, it is because of a conscious act on my part. The thought does not remain with me forever but disappears for a while, almost waiting to be recalled.

We do not even really know what that plan is to which we surrender. We can guess. Sometimes we even get it right. Other times we have to self-correct. We are challenged at any rate to believe that there is a plan. If there is true belief, the level of anxiety over the outcome should be reduced – not eradicated, but at least reduced. Then we can truly feel free of the need to control our destiny and instead live life in the fullest while answering the call of life. This is not to imply that we sit back and wait for life to happen. We are rather called forth to act and live life to the fullest with the realization that maybe we are not actually calling the shots or even if we are aware that we may not have control over the fallout.

The above-mentioned surrender is actually quite liberating. "When one is rescued from fate, it is fate no longer, but part of a bigger and more glorious Design!", writes Dr. Teria Shantall, a student of Dr. Frankl and one of the world's foremost logotherapists.2 We can learn that it is not haphazard, arbitrary events occurring but rather a carefully and lovingly designed plan. It is not an easy process to reach that level of surrender, to move from the feeling that it's Fate to a feeling of realizing that it is in fact Design. Yet reaching that point, becomes the peak of the experience.

This past week, while in convalescence, one of the signs on the wall read, "I am not telling you it will be easy. I'm telling you it will be worth it."

The children of Jacob didn’t 'get it'. I don’t always get it either. I have moments of clarity when I do experience it though that clarity does not remain. So I know it's there – waiting for me; waiting for me to recognize my responsibility towards myself on the path to meaning and respond positively and energetically to that call.

 

Notes

  1. Bereishit 45:7
  2. Dr. Shantall wrote this in a private email to me following my heart attack

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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