An Instant In An Eternity

Shimon Peres (z''l) left the world yesterday and shortly will be buried right before Rosh Hashanah. Many years ago when I was an intern with AIPAC I was assisting an Israeli member of Knesset at the policy conference. He had a meeting with Peres and was running late or needed to reschedule. He told me to call up to Peres' suite and take care of it. So I called and started to explain the situation to the person on the other end of the phone. Yep, it was Peres himself who answered the phone. He was so very nice to me and passed the phone to his scheduler to take care of whatever I had called about! He was a giant of a leader. He had the right kind of outlook and perspective. This. Just this. I leave it for you.

At the end of the day, even with all the frustrations and challenges that may come from our relationships with family, hopefully, there exists a foundation of love on which to rest. In those days when we have to face up to the fact that our family is imperfect, that our relationships are flawed, that something is lacking for us, having that foundation beneath us can help us keep standing. There are certainly families and relationships where that foundation of love is cracked, or even failing. So then the work that needs to be done is more intensive because repairing the foundation must either come first or together with the other work needed. That can be hard. And there are situations where the foundation is just flat out missing. If we can see what our foundation is - solid, cracking, damaged, failing, or missing altogether - that can help us as we work on the rest of our house. And hopefully someone has a pot of macaroni and cheese cooking on the stove top.

I've been finding the relationships between words engaging and interesting. Looking at blame/responsibility and excuse/explain has led me to another pair of words recently often on my mind. Growth and development One can have growth without development which eventually will come crumbling down upon itself for the stagnation. Like an 8 foot tall 2 year old! One can have development without growth and likely will reach limits that impede the development. Like with technologies that are more and more developed to the point the company hasn't grown enough to support the development and so they are sold or closed down. There is a fine point, that sweet spot, that tipping point, where the balance between growth and development is at its best. Many would argue that urban development is a current example of this kind of imbalance - in most any place. We certainly see it here in Israel as our town is looking to fill each and every space that can take an apartment buildi...

There is a remarkably fine line between making excuses and offering explanations. It can be quite challenging to know the difference and that confusion can lead to difficulties. We work hard to help our children learn the difference between making an excuse for behavior versus offering an explanation to help figure out how or why something happened. Sometimes it is helpful to get the background but sometimes it just confuses matters. The balance between excuse and explain is similar to the one I have been pondering between blame and responsibility. Sometimes when we are trying to assign responsibility we actually end up placing blame. Both are a bit of a slippery slope that we should only start down with great caution. Strangely the challenge of excuses versus explanations is more easily addressed with children, which also tells me that it's more commonly understood as opposed to blame versus responsibility. We'd all do better to see the fine line between the two.

Having already established that the better choice in life is to take responsibility over placing blame - at least if we want to build relationships - the next step is to figure out how to both muster the courage to take responsibility and also build safe environments to allow others to take responsibility. It strikes me, based on a sample size of 3 children, that the fear of consequences is one of the major, if not THE major, hindrance to taking responsibility for our actions. When we don't know how others will respond to our confession, our admission of responsibility, it makes taking that step even harder. Interestingly, in the Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services there are a number of times we recite the Vidui (confessional) prayer. It's almost poem like in our alphabetical recitation of our sins and it is done in the communal form - using plural language. We all stand together and out loud list these sins. Obviously the intent is not that...

Family - again on that topic today (too long of a week led to an earlier bedtime last night so no time to write). Being in the midst of sorting through all manner of family related matters keeps this subject at the forefront for me and constantly relevant and in need of attention. Life is hard, messy, complicated, fun, challenging, exciting, terrifying, and so much more. And family, well, family is just a whole hot mess, basically. We can either choose to ignore the mess and go along as best as possible pretending that what we have is good enough or we can see the mess and try to clean it up as best as possible for a better environment. What I do know is that I will grow and change as a result of the hard work needed and I am confident that I will be happier with whom I become. And I believe that is true for everyone else. Now if you were given any kind of guarantee on family being easy and tidy, please scan and send me a copy so I can see if any of the warranty papers I have s...

We fundamentally have two choices in life - take responsibility or place blame. (Obviously we have many more choices when we are at an ice cream store!) My last post was on family and the challenges that face families in building and maintaining the connectedness that is necessary to an extended family. I was recently at a meeting where the concepts of responsibility and blame were raised. Digging deeper we talked about how when family members recognize their responsibility, recognize their roles and take ownership of them, that's how family is built, supported, and encouraged. On the flip side when family members blame others for the real or perceived faults that blaming act only breaks down and destroys whatever relationship there was. It's hard to take responsibility for ourselves. We work hard to teach our young children to do that. Owning that, "yes, I hit my brother because it was more efficient than talking through my frustrations about him having the last p...