Freedom

Just before this past Passover (which is to say the one we just passed over, which is in the past, so get over it), Rabbi gave a Shabbat sermon about freedom. I thought it was great and apparently others did too, because by popular demand, he emailed it out. I read it at our own seder, so you've already heard it, but I thought I should post it here because:

1. There has been some other popular demand for another For My Kittens post.
2. This piece is worthy of immortalization (or at least as long a life as Google allows it).
3. I can get it posted a lot faster than something I have to come up with myself.

I promise, I'll post something of my own soon (and I realize this is the second post in a row of someone else's work), but here's something to tide you over, even if it is a do-over from Passover, over which you've already pored (or at least listened to) in the recent past that just passed over us.

Our Rabbi attributes this to Rabbi Eli Friedman...

Ah, the Festival of Freedom. What a lovely celebration.

 

Only one problem. What exactly is freedom?

 

Any teenager will tell you, freedom is the freedom to do whatever you want.

 

That's ironic, because the same young people clamoring for the freedom to do whatever they want have no idea what they want.

 

And they are not the only ones. A quick survey will show you that more people than you think have no idea what they really want out of life.

 

Oh sure, they'll tell you they want peace, health, and prosperity. But that is more a list of what they do not want: conflict, illness or struggle. People also don't want pandemics, natural disasters, melting ice caps, religious oppression, systemic racism, police brutality, and a host of other things. But once their life is free of everything they don't want, ask them what they do want - most don't know.

 

The past year has been a relatively easy one as far as this question goes. Ask anyone what they want, and they all answered quickly: an end to the pandemic; freedom from COVID.

 

But when we are finally free from COVID, that gnawing feeling will return to many hearts: what do I want?

 

And if so many people can't point to exactly what they want, how can those people ever maximize the freedom of being able to do and have whatever they want?

 

When we were kids we used to laugh at the joke about the guy shouting, "I'm free! I'm free!" and the little boy saying, "So what, I'm four!" [It took me a long time before I finally got this joke!] The punchline is irrelevant but on the other hand, if a person is free to do as they please but has no insight into what is pleasing, then, "You're free; so what?"

 

***

 

So what do we want? It's hard to tell. We're such complex, multilayered beings that sometimes, to our confusion, different parts of us want opposite things, and we're left struggling to decipher what we want and what we really want.

 

We want the pleasure of junk food; but we really want the lightness that comes from eating healthy.

 

We want the thrill of being reckless; but we really want the stability of being responsible.

 

We want indulge in laziness; but we really want the results that come only from hard work.

 

We want the effortlessness of the easy way out; but we really want the satisfaction of the hard job well done.

 

We want the rush of resentment and the sweet taste of revenge; but we really want the sublime feelings of forgiveness and reconciliation.

 

We sometimes want those who love us to leave us alone; but we really want those who love us to never, ever leave us.

 

We want the carelessness that comes from being needed by nobody; but we really want the inner joy that comes from being needed by somebody.

 

We want the childish glee that comes from having no responsibilities; but we really want the deep pride that comes from having awesome responsibilities.

 

We want the meaningless fun of being single and unattached; but we really want the meaningful attachment of marriage and the blessed burden of loyalty.

 

We want the cheap silliness of meaningless days and nights; but we really, really want the blessing of a meaningful life. 

 

We want the obscurity of being like everyone else; but we really want the richness of being true to ourselves - the Chosen People.

 

We want to ignore our religious obligations; but we really want to do as many Mitzvot as we can.

 

We want the bliss of pretending to not notice that our souls are hungering for something deeper; but we really want the gratification that is only found by feeding that hunger with Yiddishkeit.

 

We want the uncomplicated existence of living for today; but we really want the transcendence that we get from living for a higher purpose - service to others and service to G-d.

 

We want the guilty pleasure of tasting sin; but we really want the weightlessness of innocence.

 

We want the power rush of raw arrogance; but we really want the unsinkable calm of authentic humility before G-d.

 

 

We want the adventure that is making it up as you go along; but we really want the firmness that is knowing what is true.

 

We want the guilt-free existence afforded by atheism; but we really, really, want the unmatched happiness that comes from a deep and abiding faith in G-d.

 

We want the low expectations of victimhood that comes from believing we need G-d and He doesn't need us at all; but we really want the empowering challenge of knowing that G-d needs us and our Mitzvot more than we could ever need anything. 

 

***

 

Now we have a definition of freedom. Freedom is the freedom to have what you really want.

 

Freedom to have responsibility; hard work; accomplishment; forgiveness; closeness to loved ones; being needed; having awesome responsibilities; loyalty; a meaningful life; Jewish living; Mitzvot; knowledge of how to feed the soul; a higher purpose; innocence; humility; knowing what is true; deep, abiding faith; and being needed by our Creator.

 

Well then, my friends, if that's what freedom is, there's only one place that carries that: a life lived carefully by the wisdom of the Torah.

 

***

 

Moses informed Pharaoh of G-d's words: "Let me People go, that they may serve Me."

 

Freedom isn't Pharaoh saying you can go. That is just the beginning.

 

True freedom is when G-d writes the secret to a life of freedom, carves it in stone, and gives it to you. Now, if you wish, and you choose to serve G-d, you are free. 

Advice From Mama Cat

It's been a terribly long time since I have posted to this blog, but something just happened that has spurred me to action. A friend of Mom's recently asked Mom to write a letter to the friend's daughter, who was graduating high school. The purpose of the letter was to offer advice to the new graduate. Mom repurposed some verbiage that she had assembled for her own kid's graduation (you may recognize it!), added some new stuff and sent it off. I thought it was terrific advice and should be shared (again) with all of you. While the words are all Mom's, I've taken to liberty to chop out the parts that make it a letter to a friend's daughter and convert it into a more universal message for all of you...

Keep God before you and be mindful of the gift of life that you have been given. Remember that our job on this earth is to bring holiness into our lives and the lives of those around us. This is probably my most important piece of advice to you. Too often we humans forget the source of our existence and then we forget the purpose of our time here on earth. 

Be joyful. A happy attitude is sometimes the only variable we can control in a difficult situation. Our outlook can make the difference between an impossible problem and a workable situation. We are all drawn to people who look at life in a positive way; it is a refreshing characteristic and will take you far. 

Be connected to others. Value the people that you meet and take the time to care about them and hear them when they share their heart with you. Be a friend and let others be your friend. Being connected to other people is the most important way to stay physically and emotionally healthy, throughout our lives. 

Be passionate about everything and everyone that you encounter. Use your passion to motivate you to always give 100% in every endeavor. Be the person who is willing to put your energies to good use to make a positive difference in the world. 

Learn from your mentors and learn from your elders. Finding a good mentor is one of the great gifts we experience. Be humble enough to look at others, especially those who are older or who have more life experience, as sources of wisdom and knowledge. Pay attention to how they live their lives and what they value and how they prioritize their time. 

Teach those to whom you have something to offer. On the flip side of looking for people to look up to and learn from, make sure that you serve as a role model and mentor for those who will look up to you. You will never learn anything as completely as when you teach it to another and you will never be happier than when you help another person on his or her way. 

Work hard so that you know you have given your best effort. Diligence and follow-through matter as much, if not more, than talent.This is so important to know, especially when you have been given the gift of great intellect. Ability is only impressive when combined with industriousness, thoroughness and perseverance. In fact, ability is a gift but dedication is a choice. Our choice to live a dedicated and Godly life counts for way more than even the gifts that God has given us. 

Enjoy every day of your life! This seems like an easy one but it can sometimes be the hardest to do when times are tough. Having a positive attitude, especially on the tough days, is what will get you through those challenging times and will help you to come out stronger and wiser on the other side.

Go To Sleep, Kittens!

Would you go a day without eating if you didn't have to? Think about how bad you feel when you don't eat and how great it feels when you finally do. It probably isn't something you would want to endure very often.

Have you ever had to go to the bathroom, but there just wasn't any place to do it (at least legally and discreetly)? Or recall the last time you were badly constipated. Think about how bad you feel when you can't perform this basic bodily function and then how great it feels when you finally can. It probably isn't something you would want to endure very often.

Have you ever held your breath to the point where your lungs start to burn? Think about how bad it feels to not be able to breathe and then how great it feels when you finally do. It probably isn't something you would want to endure very often.

Have you ever had to start your day after not getting very much sleep? Think about how bad you feel in the morning and all day long, and then think about how great it feels to get a good night's sleep so you wake fully rested. It probably isn't something you would want to endure very often...oh wait!

So how come you don't get enough sleep? Routinely? Night after night after night? Sleeping is a basic need to keep our bodies healthy, just like eating, going to the bathroom and breathing, yet you deprive yourself of it on an almost constant basis.

The more science learns about sleep, the more important they find it to be. The obvious benefit is that your mind is sharper and you're able to function better - even physically better - after you've had enough sleep. But that's not all sleep is needed for. You need sleep for your body to heal itself. You need sleep for your body to regulate your metabolism properly. People suffering from sleep apnea (where upon falling asleep, the muscles of the tongue and mouth relax, blocking off breathing and forcing the brain to reawaken constantly all night long) often lose weight as soon as they use a CPAP machine (which prevents sleep apnea). And perhaps the coolest and most important of all, sleeping washes your brain, as explained in this TED Talk. Unlike the rest of your body, your brain has no lymphatic system to rid itself of toxins. But during sleep, the blood vessels in your brain contract and allow the cranial fluid to enter the deeper recesses and wash away all the bad stuff. The consequences of not washing your brain are not fully known, but it is suspected that there could be a link to Alzheimer's Disease.

So why don't we sleep enough? Its funny how sleep is the first thing we readily sacrifice when we run short on time. Would we sacrifice oxygen? Food? Bathroom time? Generally not, so why sleep? We need it as much as those other things. The difference is that the discomfort we feel when we skip those other things is more immediate and acute than when we skip sleep. I suppose we were created (or evolved - take your pick) that way because forgoing sleep could be a matter of survival. We have the capacity to go without any sleep for more than a day and persist on much less than our daily portion for weeks, months and even years. The funny thing is, we take advantage of this capacity even when it is not a matter of survival. In our daily lives of relative safety and comfort, we cheat ourselves of our nightly allowance in the name of work, school, TV, Facebook, funny cat videos on YouTube, etc. 

It doesn't have to be that way, it just takes a little discipline. And it's not much more discipline than that required for other sensible behaviors, such as not eating too much junk food or brushing your teeth every day. And it's much easier than sticking to an exercise program. If you have to get up at 6:00 AM in the morning, that means you should go to bed at 10:00 PM the night before. You might not be feeling tired at 10:00 and you may still have a bunch of things you need to do before calling it a night (only 7 more cat videos!), but you need to be firm with yourself and do the right thing. You'll thank yourself in the morning when that alarm goes off, and if you do it reliably, you'll soon be waking up naturally just before the alarm, feeling rested and ready to go.

Many years ago, when some of my kittens were very young and I had to get up very early to beat the rush hour commute to my job which was an hour away, I was determined to make more waking hours for myself at home in the evening. I forced myself to stay up late each night, and with practice, found that I was able to get by on only about 5 hours of sleep each night, night after night, and yet feel normal each day. I was actually quite proud of this "accomplishment." After a few months of this, something very strange happened to me. At that point in my career, I was writing software programs for the company that I worked for. One day, our program tester came over to my desk and said he had found a problem with my new program. I asked what program he was talking about and he referred to it by name (each of our programs had a name so we could easily refer to them). I told him I had not written that program, that someone else had, because I didn't recognize the name. But he insisted it was my program and described what the program did. I still didn't recognize it and continued to insist that someone else had written it and he was mistaken. 

Since he wasn't giving up, I agreed to go look at the problem. It would not be the first time that I had been asked to find a problem in someone else's program. Seeing the program in operation, I still didn't recognize it and became even more adamant that someone else had written it. Finally I set out to prove it and went to the file drawer where we kept the printouts of the program (this was a long time ago). I started to read through the code and had to admit that it was written in my style. We only had a few programmers and each had his own style. This program was definitely written the way I would have written it, if I had been the one to write it. I studied the program, which did not look at all familiar, in order to find the "bug" in the program that was causing the problem. Over the course of about an hour, I very, very slowly began to feel like the program was a little bit familiar. As I continued to work on the problem, that feeling of familiarity continued to grow, until eventually I felt enough of a sense of recognition that I began to feel that the tester was right - I had written this program. It was a Wednesday. The date on the program was the previous Monday, just two days prior.

Writing a computer program is a personal and somewhat intimate process. I imagine it is like painting a picture or writing a poem. It is a creative process and requires a lot of concentration and effort. When you are done, you definitely feel a sense of ownership (for some programmers, so much so that they hate to have anyone else even touch their programs). After putting only just a few hours into writing a program, you are not likely to forget it. Certainly not after only two days. Yet, that is exactly what had happened to me.

Needless to say, I was a bit worried about this event. Within a day or two, I happened to hear a report on the radio about a study that indicated that most Americans do not get enough sleep. They began listing the symptoms known at the time: fatigue, irritability, inability to concentrate, weight gain, and short term memory loss! Deciding that lack of sleep was my problem (remember, only 5 hours a night for the past few months!), I focused on getting enough sleep every night. I never again had a memory failure as scary and unusual as that terrible day.

Five hours a night is not much, but it is not that much less than the 6 hours you are probably getting a night. This is playing with fire. You were built to sleep, just as you were built to breathe, eat and eliminate waste. It's time to get serious about sleep and make sure you spend enough time doing it. We can all survive a night or two of inadequate sleep, and sometimes it is unavoidable. But it shouldn't be the norm every night. Don't wait for something bad to happen, like losing your memory or falling asleep behind the wheel. Start practicing a full night of sleep every night. Make inadequate sleep the exception, not the rule. 

Hey, what time is it? If it's after 10:00 PM, stop reading this right now and go to sleep!

Eat My Children

Commas are so important. In this case it is literally (no pun intended) a matter of life and death. The actual title to this post is "Eat, my children," but omitting the comma is much more attention-getting. Please be assured I would never make such a modest proposal. The real topic of this post is eating food (of the more conventional sort) and advising my children on how best to do it.

I love to eat. I love food. I love crunchy food. I love pizza, root beer floats (even though they don't crunch), spicy food, cookies, burritos, pomegranate seeds, Chinese sweet-and-sour chicken, sushi, beer, sweet corn on the cob, medjool dates...I could go on and on. If the food is particularly good, I can easily exceed the natural capacity of my stomach and just keep eating long after I've already become sick. (This took years of practice and frankly, it is a skill I do not recommend you acquire.)

My father often spoke of new eating techniques taught to him by my step mother. These techniques centered around eating slowly. I didn't think much about it at the time, being perfectly happy with how I ate. But it's funny how things your father tells you can take an awfully long time to sink in. Many years after he first shared his new found habits with me, I started to pay attention to how I ate. I put a bite in my mouth and began to chew, and in almost an instant, I swallowed and then quickly moved on to the next forkful. As long as there was an ample supply of food and my stomach hadn't begun to tear along a seam, this worked out great. But then I thought about it and realized that the really good part of eating was tasting the food in my mouth. And when the experience had to end (either because the food had run out, or because of extreme gastric discomfort), it was a real bummer - no more taste in my mouth!

So while eating should have been focused on the tasting phase of the process, instead all I was doing was shoveling food from my plate to my stomach about as fast as I could go, catching only a brief instant of pleasure during mastication before it dropped down the hatch never to be tasted again. This misalignment of process to priorities was particularly troublesome when eating something like chocolate mousse or fresh-baked apple pie...when I wished the eating didn't have to end (and shouldn't have even started in the first place). Not only was my whole process of eating not optimized for my top priority, but I didn't particularly like stuffing my stomach until the onset of pain either.*

Next, I focused on my jaws as they chewed. They were cranking away! Those things can really move! And then it struck me. Why the heck are they in such a hurry? That's when I realized I needed to slow down. Chew slowly. Enjoy the taste. Doing so makes the pleasurable part of the experience last longer (super important when eating chocolate mousse, especially as that stuff doesn't even require chewing!). When I began to practice the art of eating slowly, I found that not only did the pleasure of taste last much longer, but I even tended to stop at a reasonable point, sparing my stomach the pain of a seam-splitting overdose.

Though we religiously (pun intended) enjoy a family meal together every Friday night, most other nights of the week, this is a rare event. Busy schedules that pack activities far into every evening deny us the pleasure of each other's company at the dining room table. As we are all readers in our family, it is typical to bring a book (or electronic device) to the table to keep us company, consuming calories and literature (or the news, or funny cat videos) simultaneously. I have found though, that if you are paying attention to what you are reading (or watching), you aren't paying much attention to what you're eating. That means the food disappears and you've barely noticed it as it slid past your taste buds. Now this might actually be a good idea if the food isn't very good. Fortunately, this is an exceedingly rare event in our house and most times, I would really like to enjoy the taste of what I'm eating. I have found by focusing on my plate of food rather than a book, phone, computer or TV, I get much more enjoyment out of the meal, even if I must be dining alone.

So if you like eating, and especially if you are eating something that you particularly enjoy, I would like to suggest that you close the book and put the smartphone aside. Instead, let the food be your company. Pay attention to it and chew it slowly. Your taste buds, and maybe your stomach, will thank you.


*I am concerned here of course with what I hope for most people are normal eating circumstances - it's meal time and you're perhaps a little hungry. Or maybe not hungry, but presented with an opportunity for recreational consumption. I am not talking about circumstances of malnutrition or, G-d forbid, chronic hunger. Obviously in those cases, the intake and digestion of proper nutrition is paramount!

Practical Practice

Practice is my new favorite word. It is my new favorite word for what it represents. Practice is a stunningly powerful thing. It's like a super power, only it runs in slow motion, so you have to have a little patience to see the power emerge. I wish I had understood that when I was younger so that I could have been enjoying my super powers all these years. Well, better late than never.


In my favorite movie, The Matrix, the characters could learn anything by downloading expertise through a computer port in the back of their heads. It took just a few seconds to become an expert in Kung Fu or piloting a helicopter. Think of what we could accomplish if only we had that port in our heads (though I'd prefer a micro USB port over that big black hole they had in The Matrix). Well, in a way, we do have that capability, only it takes longer to download the expertise (but on the upside, we don't have any holes in the back of our head).

Practice.

It's like magic. Practice something enough and you get good at it, almost whether you want to or not. The neural pathways in your brain needed to perform the practiced skill actually undergo a physical change called myelination. The nerve cells along the pathway grow a myelin sheath around them that helps the signals travel faster along the pathway. You have to practice the skill to get the myelin sheath to grow. This means taking the time to practice, repeating the skill over and over, coaxing the myelination along.

Time can be perceived as a big obstacle to practicing. It can be daunting to think that you must spend precious minutes of every day to practice some new skill, knowing that it might be weeks, months or even years before you can reap the fruit of that labor. These requirements can be demotivating and prevent you from even starting the process. I know for myself, when I was younger, I couldn't even imagine putting in the time on a daily basis, and even more, couldn't imagine how I could wait so long for the results to present themselves. But, here is what I have learned about each of these aspects of time with regard to practice.


As to having to wait weeks, months or years for the fruit of your daily practice to ripen, do not give it a moment's thought. This is where the magic of practice really happens. The time will pass and it will do so quite reliably. And I promise that unless you have been locked in prison or have been forced to live under extremely unpleasant circumstances all that time, after it has passed, you will look back and feel that it has done so very quickly. Commit the time each day (or almost every day) and let time go by as it will do anyway. Before you know it, your skill will have grown and you will be able to do things you could never do before. Your slow-motion super power is there waiting for you to use it.


But how to fit in those daily practice sessions? We each make decisions every day about how we will spend our time. For some of those decisions, we don't have much flexibility. We must attend the class at the time it starts. We must be at work when our boss requires it. Then there are other things we do with our time without any thought at all, such as eating or brushing our teeth or taking a shower or getting dressed or driving to work. Some are necessary (eating) and some are just so beneficial (brushing teeth) that we automatically and ungrudgingly make time for them - a little time each day. The key to the daily practice of a new skill is to make it part of your automatic routine, so that you don't even have to think about it or make priority decisions about whether to practice or not. (You may have to make a priority decision once in a while when something unusual occurs in your daily schedule, but for the normal days, the practice should have its place in your schedule.) If you are just so busy that you feel you really don't have time to practice, then commit to only a few minutes each day, even if it is only 20 or even 10 minutes. Or consider practicing only 3 or 4 days a week instead of every day. Once you actually begin to notice your progress, you may find that you can't wait for your practice time slot to come each day so you can push yourself to the next level of accomplishment.

And while you're never too old to start learning something new, here's one more piece of advice from someone who didn't discover the magic of practice until well into what is likely the second half of his life. If you practice when you're young, you will reap three extra benefits. The first is that you will likely achieve your goal sooner, as younger brains are in the process of myelinating anyway and I expect do so more readily. The second is that if what you are practicing involves physical activity (as most things requiring practice do), young joints and muscles will more easily adapt to practiced movements. The third is that you will have more years to enjoy the fruits of your labors.

So put on your cape, crank up that super power and get started on that skill you always wished you had.

Name Change

Due to popular demand, the title of this blog has now been changed to match the URL.

Take Responsibility

We're starting off with a tough one. This is perhaps the hardest one to understand. It took me a while to fully comprehend it. It's not easy to explain, so chew on it a while and hopefully you'll come to see what I'm talking about.

I learned this from one of my teachers in school. As I've gotten older, I find that I conflate memories, so I may be ascribing this to the wrong teacher, but I'm pretty sure I learned it from Mr. Robbins, my 11th and 12th grade math teacher. 

He told us to take responsibility.

We make excuses for things. Excuses are ways of forgiving ourselves for things we did. For example, if I'm late for work, that is something I did. I arrived late. I may offer the excuse that I was late because traffic was bad. Traffic was something outside my control and so it wasn't my fault that I was late for work.

We must distinguish between excuses and reasons, so said Mr. Robbins. The reason I was late for work was that traffic was bad...and I didn't anticipate that. It is the reason. I can choose to turn that reason into an excuse: What could I do? Traffic was bad. I can't make the traffic good. There was nothing I could do about it.

Now for the hard part. Who is responsible for me being late? The traffic is just a thing, it is not a person, it is not sentient, it exhibited no intent or purpose, it does not know me, it doesn't know where I live or work and it doesn't care, because it has no capacity for caring.

Getting to work on time was my responsibility. It was up to me. Had I taken my responsibility seriously, I could have checked the traffic and left earlier. Or left earlier just in case there would be traffic. Or called ahead to at least give warning that I would be late (which may not be good enough, but at least is being responsible).

I hope you're still with me, because now it gets a little tougher. Forget the traffic. What if I was late because I got a flat tire. We usually don't leave for work extra early in case we get a flat tire, because it so rarely happens. And if it happened to happen on the morning when there was an important meeting at which I was the keynote presenter and lots of important people with important things to do got held up because I was late, well, that's not my tire's problem. It's my problem. Like it or not, I have to take responsibility for it.

Here's the key thing. You can still take responsibility, even if the reason was something out of your control. It's usually not fun to do so, and it may not feel fair. But if the result is that people were hurt, damaged, insulted, annoyed, inconvenienced or had their time wasted because of what happened to you, it is time to step up and take responsibility for it. It may not completely compensate the other person for their loss, but it may fix it some. It may even improve your stature in their eyes. But most importantly, it is the right thing to do; it makes you a better person.

There was one thing that Mr. Robbins did not tell us, but that I have found to be true, and it's the best part. When you've taken responsibility for something that you could have just excused yourself for, it actually makes you feel good. It gives you a sense of dignity. Taking responsibility restores some of the control that you might not have had over the circumstances that got you into trouble in the first place.