Winter Wonderland
Question
The High Holidays and Sukkot was a great reprieve from all the chaos this year. I felt so peaceful and connected to myself. But then after the holidays were all over, reality hit like a bucket of ice water. Pandemic out of control, election out of control, people dying and people struggling and when I look around it makes me question the notion of a kindness-focused Creator. Yes, we have blessing and goodness and opportunity. But so much suffering, too. How could the purpose of existence be positive (as you’ve written) with so much negativity everywhere?
Answer
I appreciate the tone of your question. Rather than asking “how could God do this to us” you asked about how to reconcile the assumption of a kind God with the hardship we see everywhere right now. Which is a nuanced dilemma.
Welcome to the winter. This time of year, following the joy of the high holy days, the physical world around us slowly disintegrates into darkness and cold. It’s desolate and uninviting. It’s not a coincidence that there are no biblical holidays between Sukkot and Passover. Have you ever noticed the distribution of Jewish holidays over the year? You can’t really miss it. You got one half of the year with 5 holidays, and one half with 13! We’re skewed toward the warmer months, and it’s not because we’re cold blooded.
It flows perfectly with the movements that characterize authentic personal growth. You get inspired, you have clarity, you set goals... And then the excitement wears off. Then comes the stalling, the sliding, the stuckness. It happens to all of us. Sometimes the cycle takes a month, sometimes it’s over the course of many drawn out years. It could be a work project, a relationship, a new health regiment... No matter where or how long it stretches out, the pattern is a fact of life.
I mean, we all know how new-year's resolutions go… I remember how every year, the week of January 2nd, the exercise class I attend was always packed with all these new faces. Us regulars chuckled and made some extra room. We knew the crowding wouldn’t last long… By the week of Februrary 2nd we were back to just the regulars. Because resolutions are very easy to make; they’re just really hard to keep
That pattern is also part of the cycle of the Jewish year. Holiday season is an intensely focused time. We look inward, ask a lot of hard questions about our goals and direction and how our lives match up to that. We reaffirm our life purpose and resolve to pursue it more effectively.
But that mindset and clarity eventually fade into the past and they’re replaced with the daily slog. We forget about big dreams and personal goals and slide back into treadmill living. That’s when it’s really hard to keep the ideals in the forefront. But that difficulty creates a special opportunity. Experience the magic of real change. That’s the change that happens when you’re not inspired, not feeling it, not motivated. But you do what you need to anyway.
Another non-accident about the winter: the increased darkness. In Jewish philosophy, darkness is always associated with lack of clarity. You can’t navigate a dark, unfamiliar room, especially if you don’t know where the door is on the other end. Summer days, long and light-filled, are a time of spiritual clarity. Winter days are just the opposite: spiritually challenging. Lacking that clarity and purpose. The challenge is to get through the room by memory. You knew the path during the summer months, while the lights were on and bright -- now it’s time to take the plunge and follow your mental map, even when it’s difficult and confusing. That’s where the magic happens. Navigating a brightly lit room doesn’t say much about who you are as a person.
Why the darkness if God wants us to reach our goals? Wouldn’t we all have an easier time getting there with the lights on? Well, we’d have an easier time seeing our way around. But that’s not real growth, and it’s not the greatness that we have the potential to uncover. True growth is not about getting to a destination, it’s about who we become along the way. Greatness involves discovering and utilizing internal resources; it requires discipline, focus and grit. Ownership and initiative. You don’t usually exhibit those when someone is showing you around. It’s when your limbs are aching and your heart is breaking and you don’t want to try anymore but you take just one more excruciating step... That’s growth. That’s greatness.
So that’s the challenge, the gift and the opportunity of winter -- and of all the dark times in our lives. The painful, stuck moments when the obstacles are so close and the pain is so loud they completely block the view you had of the shining goals that lay beyond them. Those moments are our greatest treasure. They build us like nothing else can.
When life feels dark and out of control, there are two pieces of knowledge that can help you move through the unrecognizable room-turned-maze. One, darkness is your time to shine. Two, there is always something you can control. And that something is the only thing that matters: if and how you use the gift of darkness.
The funny thing about darkness is that it inevitably exposes the weakest, rawest parts of us. It blinds us into lashing out, withdrawing, losing hope, or trying to numb ourselves so that we forget both the pain and end up forgetting the destination too.
It might take everything out of you, but just remember everything you want to be is buried inside the lostness. Pull your goals back into focus, find your raw edges and take just one tiny exhausted step forward.
Now you’re on your way to greatness.
Happy Winter!