Trying to Find Gratitude in the Face of Challenges
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
Photo by Kobe on Pexels.com
I’m often asked to teach for various organizations in our community and when I can, I like to say “yes” for a number of reasons.
First, as many of you know, I love to teach!
Second, it helps to educate people about CAJE and our work.
Third, it helps other organizations in our community bring more Judaism into their programming. So it’s a “win-win” all around.
Two weeks ago, I gave over a teaching online for Sharsheret, the Jewish non-profit that provides personalized support, lifesaving education financial assistance and genetic counseling to empower those faced with or at increased genetic risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
I’ve been tested for the BRCA gene through Sharsheret (thankfully, did not have the genetic markers) and I know many people whom they’ve helped in our community.
Below is an edited version of what I taught about that is very appropriate for this Thanksgiving weekend and will serve as both an article and Dvar Torah.
This topic is challenging because when we are facing trials, especially trials in which we experience pain, it feels almost like gaslighting to connect gratitude to that experience.
That’s why I very intentionally put the words “trying to find” before the word “gratitude.”
The author Haruki Murakami once wrote: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
Along with death and taxes, another life experience we will not be able to avoid is… pain.
Everyone alive will experience pain of one sort or another. How we process and experience that pain is what differs from person to person, which we all know just by observing ourselves & others.
And that is what makes “Trying to Find Gratitude” so necessary.
When faced with pain, we must marshal every available strategy and skill to meet this difficult challenge.
Gratitude can be one of those strategies. Let’s explore how that might happen.
It’s instructive to look at the word Gratitude in Hebrew because it brings us another layer of meaning that we may overlook when we understand it only in English.
In Hebrew, the word for gratitude is “HaKarat HaTov” — which means Recognizing the Good.
And I’d like to emphasize the word “recognizing” since as we just noted, our experience of reality is based upon how we perceive reality.
When we seek to recognize the good that is present in any given situation, then we are able to shift our gaze from what is tormenting us, to what might help alleviate some of our torment.
You might be thinking, “Rabbi, are you saying that I should recognize the good in cancer?!?”
And I would respond with a firm “NO!” There is no good in cancer itself.
But your world is not entirely cancer, is it?
You are more than your cancer. You are more than your pain.
Take a moment to think about what has been good, that you’ve experienced, despite your pain.
Where can you find even a speck, even a flickering moment of positivity or good, even in the depths of your difficult experience.
Much of what I’m about to teach you I learned from my teacher, Dr. Alan Morinis, founder of The Mussar Institute, a modern organization seeking to promote the ancient path of Jewish character development.
And an incredible book he wrote on how to built various important character traits, including gratitude, according to Jewish tradition is Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar.
One of the key traits in Jewish character development is Gratitude and Alan writes:
“Myriad benefits come to us every day, but most of us find it easy to overlook them and instead focus on what we lack.
And our entire society is built on advertisers who attempt to convince us of just how inadequate or lacking we really are so we buy whatever they want to sell. So we are up against a lot of forces!”
Alan continues by saying: “When you open yourself to experience the trait of gratitude, you discover with clarity and accuracy how much good there is in your life.
Practicing gratitude means recognizing the good that is already yours.
If you’ve lost your job but still have your family and health, you have something to be grateful for.
If you can’t move except in a wheelchair but your mind is as sharp as ever, you have something to be grateful for.
If you’ve broken a string on your violin, but you still have three more…. you have something to be grateful for.
Now this attitude is not natural to many people — which is why we use the term to ‘practice gratitude,’ we have to work at it!
In reaching for gratitude, no one is saying you ought to put on rose-colored glasses. When we are in pain, it is very hard to appreciate the good.
But it is worth the effort to practice gratitude, because the one who benefits most is the one who is suffering.
Recognizing the good affirms life, and it can set your heart free to go beyond the pain.
Remember there is no limit to what we don’t have, and if that is where we focus, then our lives are inevitably filled with endless dissatisfaction.
But when gratitude is a living reality well established in our hearts, we constantly refresh our vision so that we take accurate note of the good that actually surrounds us.
This is the meaning behind the ancient proverb from Pirkei Avot/ Ethics of our Ancestors: Who is rich? The person who rejoices in their lot in life.
Live like that and you will suddenly discover that you want to give thanks for anything or anyone who has benefited you.
In the Mussar classic Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pakuda of Spain wrote 1000 years ago that we tend to suffer a kind of blindness that keeps us from seeing and appreciating what we do have and he identifies 3 reasons why we fail to recognize the good in our lives.
See if you can identify how these factors might play out in your own life and keep you from experiencing the soul-trait of gratitude.
First, he says we tend not to feel appreciative because we are too absorbed in worldly things and that physical pleasures can never be fully gratified, which means we can pursue them endlessly, keeping us from experiencing gratitude for what we actually have.
Second, we are so used to our gifts that we don’t even really see them anymore. We take them for granted and don’t recognize them as good.
And third, we are so focused on the afflictions we suffer in this world that we forget that both our very life and all we own are among the good things that have been gifted to us.
Does any of this ring true for you?
We all know real-life examples of terrible things that befell people that turned out in the end to be ‘blessings in disguise.’
The Polish family exiled to Siberia that saved them from the Nazi death camps.
The wrong that we may have committed that we regretted and put us on a totally different path in life.
It’s much easier to look back into the past and see how what we thought was a horrible thing turned into something positive in hindsight.
The hardest, highest level is trying to receive whatever comes our way with an attitude of thankfulness IN THE MOMENT.
Rabbi Nachum Ish Gam Zu, a famous sage who lived about 2000 years ago, got his name because no matter what happened to him, for the good or for the bad, he always said about it: ‘Gam zu l’tovah—And this is also for the good.’
Again, this is not for everyone. And may never be achievable for you or me.
All we want is to strive to affirm that in everything that happens there is the POSSIBILITY of good, if only we can bring ourselves to perceive it.
And while it may not be visible now, perhaps in time, we’ll see the bigger picture and perhaps the bigger picture will include dimensions that are beyond our world and known experience.
Over and over, our task is to cultivate gratitude by asking ‘What can I find to be grateful for in this situation?’”
And finally, we come to Shabbat, a day to just be, complete as you are, not seeking to change or perfect, to strive or compete.
As Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states in his work, Letter in the Scroll: “Shabbat is the day we stand still and let all our blessings catch up with us.”
My prayer for you, and for me as well, is that we cultivate this soul-trait of gratitude in ourselves so that we more frequently recognize the good that surrounds us so that we become happier people and let all our blessings catch up with us.
