LET IT BE! – Parshat Yitro

We have an especially acute need to control what goes on in our lives. Certain schools of psychology are based on cataloging that need and learning how to control and promote it. On the other side, there is, as well, a worldwide movement towards mindfulness – learning to accept the present as it is and just living the moment. Which is correct? How do we decide?

The answer that seems to be the most correct is to create a third option and merge the two. In this week's parsha, Parshat Yitro, we find such a merger. In discussing the concept of Sabbath, the Torah tells us to do both – conquer the world, work for 6 days, create what needs to be created for the benefit of the advancement of Mankind on the one hand and in the very next sentence the Torah requires us to take a day off and just be.1 Are these contradictory statements? Control your destiny! Let It Be! How do we make sense out of these opposing concepts?

The answer lies in our ability to live with inner conflict and to accept it as part of our struggle to understand and live life. Sometimes we are meant to choose between these two opposing concepts and sometimes we are to merge them and live with this constant conflict and somehow find the special balance that is right for us. Control? Surrender? It is a difficult balance.

I have found that control is helpful until it is not. (can you say that again please?) Control is necessary for us – we control our time and try to use it to peak efficiency. We control the temperature in our homes and try to control the environment within which we raise our kids. But there are times in life when things are clearly not within our ability to control. At that point we have a choice - we can mourn our loss of control or temporarily surrender our need for control. The Sabbath teaches us that we can surrender that control. We must learn how to do it. Surrender does not mean to give up – it means to understand that I must deal with reality the way it is and know that my own impact is limited and that there are other forces at work here – forces over which I may have little or no control.2

Contrary to what may seem the rational belief, in my life I have seen that surrender actually gave me more control rather than less. It showed me a path to turn fate into destiny. Fate is what happens to us  - destiny is what we make of it.

We all have challenges. We even may have challenges which seem insurmountable. We can meet these challenges with the belief and knowledge that we can grow from them and because of them. We can become even better and stronger people because of it.3 We do not search for these challenges. we do not need to - they have a away of finding us. it is incumbent upon us to learn to meet these challenges and not give in to them. 

This is one of the many lessons of Shabbos. And with that I will wish you Shabbat Shalom.

Click here to read another another article on Parshat Yitro 

Notes

  1. Shemot 20:8-9
  2. See ealier blog - http://bit.ly/miketz77
  3. This is a major theme of Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. It is also discussed by his student Dr. Teria Shantall in her own discussion of logotherapy in her own book, 'Life in the Face of Suffering'

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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