What kind of person defends scapegoating? Before you call me crazy, ask yourself the following: how do you rid yourself of past bad acts, mistakes you wish you never made, and feelings of inadequacy? We all have “stuff” we want to get rid of, and it turns out that old fashioned scapegoating might be one appropriate tool for doing so. When I say old-fashioned, by the way, I mean really old fashioned – as in, biblical old. That’s where we find the original scapegoat, after all. And in that story, scapegoating is......
Continue Reading
Are you a quitter or a gritter? Do you take special pride in your ability to stick to a task, or to getting your kids to do so? Does it matter what is actually being accomplished, or does that not even matter because life is mostly about staying in the game, no matter what? Is grit – defined by its most prominent proponent, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth, as “the tendency to sustain perseverance and passion for challenging long-term goals” – really as important as it is increasingly fashionable to claim?......
Continue Reading
Think about a time when someone hurt you, and then came seeking forgiveness. How often did you feel that they weren’t doing it “right,” or in the way you’d anticipated – and because of that, you found it impossible to accept their overture? And what about a time when you were the one apologizing, but your sincere efforts were not accepted? How hurt and angry were you? Each party may be sincere, and yet they remain far apart. Why? Because reconciliation is not only about our own sincerity. It is about appreciating......
Continue Reading
Talking past each other is a human problem which affects us all. More often than not, it afflicts us with those about whom we care most. If we didn’t care, there would be no conflict. We would just walk away. I came across a recent example, concerning the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church.?Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of developing some wonderful relationships with senior leaders in the Church and I have learned much from them about many things, including the practice......
Continue Reading
Can you learn to be kinder and braver? Can practice make you more persistent, more optimistic, and more compassionate? Is it possible to cultivate your curiosity and creativity, widen your perspective, and strengthen your resilience? These are important questions for us individually and collectively as we work on what it means to flourish as human beings in the 21st century.? For millennia, religions and wisdom traditions understood that their “job to get done” was to help people develop these strengths and virtues. Today, we are beginning to have the social science and......
Continue Reading
Sometimes we get into trouble because we overstep: We jump into a situation too soon. We act with too much enthusiasm or commitment. The bigger challenge that most of us face in life, however, is not that we overstep, but that we understep – that we miss opportunities to be who we most want to be – whether out of fear, self-consciousness, or the simple premise that we are not really up to the opportunity/challenge. Sound familiar? The biggest regrets people share with me (and frankly, which I have felt in my......
Continue Reading
Daily Life, Grief & Coping, Wisdom Warehouse |
March 18, 2014
When a Friend Is Suffering, How Do You Help?
How do you comfort someone going through a really hard time in life? Recently, I received an email from someone describing how his very good friend’s 42 year-old daughter (a woman with two young children, age 4 and 6 – his grandchildren) was diagnosed last year with cancer and just entered hospice. This man lost his only son 12 years ago in an auto accident. And on top of all this, his brother, with whom he’s extremely close, just had major heart surgery. He asked me if The Wisdom Daily had any......
Continue Reading
Ever been in a position when you needed someone to cover for you? To do something you should have done yourself but, for whatever reason, could not? Of course you have! We all have. Perhaps you planned to bring a sick friend some soup, but asked someone else to deliver it for you because you got too busy to finish the good deed. Maybe you arranged for someone else to take care of your kids for a while because you were delayed. In those cases, someone covered for you, which is great,......
Continue Reading
We all need time to just take a deep breath, relax and enjoy life, reflect, and re-energize. Finding this place of renewal and re-creation, remembering the non-work parts of who we are, connecting more deeply to people we love and to the beauty of the world actually takes just as much intention, creativity, and practice as working productively. Every Spring, the National Day of Unplugging emphasizes this. In our hectic lives, when for the first time in human history we can be plugged in 24/7, it’s not surprising that the practice of?......
Continue Reading
Over the next seven months, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in an exhibit called “American Cool” is showing 100 photographs of people who defined cool in American culture, from the “granddaddies of cool,” Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass, through the generations, leading to Jay-Z, Johnny Depp and Madonna. I am semi-embarrassed to say, but I always feel it a supreme compliment when people call me a “cool” rabbi. It’s meant having some mysterious mix of rebelliousness, openness to new ideas, charisma with being a bit wild, anti-authority and out front, but in......
Continue Reading