On the airplane home
from our trip to Israel this summer, I was looking for a movie I hadn’t yet seen. One
choice was “Quartet,” a movie I had heard had good reviews. But instead, I found
myself watching “Late Quartet, a different movie. Not the best way to choose a
film, but as serendipity, or perhaps God’s gentle hand would have it, it turned
out to be a good choice for the flight and gave me food for thought.
In “Late Quartet,” the
story of members of a long-standing professional string quartet, Phillip
Seymour Hoffman plays the second violinist, and is considered the best second
violinist around. Early in the film, his girlfriend asks him, “Don’t you ever
want to play the melody?” He insists that he is proud of his work, adding that
the second violinist holds the group together. He is considered the best second
violinist around. Yet she convinces him to ask to take the lead every once in a
while. Should he be content with his role or risk disrupting the quartet by demanding
the opportunity to be first violin?
I noticed a similar theme
a few weeks later at a viewing of the
documentary “20 Feet from Stardom,” an uplifting film about rock and roll’s
greatest back-up singers. Some of these great voices have tried to take the 20-foot
leap forward to the front of the stage, to be lead singers, but few have
succeeded. Others happily continue sharing their powerful talents in the number
two position, behind the stars.
In both stories, the
pull to be first is in tension with a life that is meaningful, though in the
background. In each instance, we wonder: why not take our talents to the next
level? Is there anything wrong with wanting to be Number One?
Is this a natural
impulse or a product of our competitive cultural? After all, have you ever
heard an American crowd chant “we’re number two”?
Sometimes, number two
is a wonderful place to be, perhaps the best place to be.
Sometimes our purpose
is to be the 2nd fiddle, the back-up singer. The best number two I
can be.
In the Book of Genesis,
time after time it’s the number two who receives the blessing. Not Ishmael,
Abraham’s firstborn son, but Isaac. Not Esau, Isaac’s firstborn son, but Jacob.
Not Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn but Joseph. Not even King David passes on his
kingdom to his firstborn, but to Solomon, one of his younger sons. All of these
biblical stories upend the cultural norm of the day, that firstborn sons
received all the privileges and recognition. This is the first clue that the Jewish
tradition does not put stock in being number one.
But I wonder, how did
Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, and the rest of Solomon’s older brothers feel? In the
Torah we hear Esau express deep and bitter grief over losing his birthright and
his blessing. We know that losing out to someone else brings disappointment. Some
of us may be entering this new year feeling we have done our best yet not been
recognized for our work. We may have been “the other candidate” for a job. We
may have tried our hardest to come in first place, only to be beaten in the
finals.
Many of us come on Yom
Kippur with disappointments.
Disappointment is a fair
and honest reaction when our lives do not live up to our expectations. The
ancient teacher Aesop described one response to disappointment in the fable the
Fox and the Grapes.
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes
hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his
strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh they were probably sour anyway.'
Fortunately, “sour
grapes” is just one way to deal with failure, disappointment or frustration. The
key to success is not being number one. The key is finding the blessing in the
supposed curse.
One of the most
important books I read this past year was How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough. Tough has spent years learning about children and character and his book
makes the case that our approach to success in education has been overly
focused on cognitive skills, while overlooking the underlying components of personality
and character that truly ensure success. Tough delves into the current research
in psychology, economics and brain science, and weaves in personal interviews
with young people of different backgrounds who exemplify the complex equation
that equals success.
Among the key character strengths Tough found were “an
inclination to persist at a boring and often unrewarding task; the ability to
delay gratification and the tendency to follow through on a plan.” That is,
grit, resourcefulness and resilience. These are the skills that we should be
helping our children to develop, since “noncognitive
skills like resilience and resourcefulness and grit are highly predictive of
success in college.” These are skills that are not innate; they need to be modeled,
cultivated and nurtured. Not only are they skills to success in college, but they
are the skills that can make us the best number two we can possibly be: grit,
resourcefulness and resilience.
We Try Harder: Grit
When I was growing up
my dad collected the buttons put out by Avis Rent-a-car. Their slogan was “we
try harder.” He had buttons in a myriad of languages. I loved reading the
different alphabets and pronouncing all the different languages. Nous faisons plus d’efforts. Anu mishtadlim yoter. We try harder. (You
can find the buttons on ebay today)
That slogan was the
brainchild of an advertising executive named Paula Green.
In 1962, Hertz was
number one, and Avis was in a financial crisis. Paula Green articulated a philosophy
that became the company manifesto. We are only #2, so “We try harder.” With those
words, Avis workers from the CEO to the sales force to the mechanics developed
a work ethic and service mentality that won over customers. While Avis remained
number two, their profits shot up as clients recognized Avis for exceptional
customer service. We try harder remained the company slogan for fifty years.
Trying harder does not
always come naturally, but it is essential to success. Do you have that
toughness, the “grit”?
Paul Tough describes grit
as “a passionate commitment to a single mission and an unswerving dedication to
achieve that mission.” Or in other words, “Self discipline wedded to a
dedicated pursuit of a goal.”
Another great teacher, Reb
Nachman of Bratslav, agrees with Paul Tough. Reb Nachman’s slogan was: mi sherotze ose, which literally means,
one who desires, does. In other words, “We try harder.” But Reb Nachman gave a
twist to those words, saying sometimes your rotze,
your desire, has to get big enough so that you act on it. No matter who we are,
we have to fall in love with our own goals. And then we will have the rotze,
the desire, the grit, to try harder.
Finding our Purpose: Resourcefulness
Being number two may
force us to try harder. It may also motivate us to consider and reconsider our
purpose and then do whatever it takes to achieve it.
Jane McNally recently
shared this story of purpose, which comes from the third Bobover Rebbe, Rabbi
Shlomo Halberstam, who attracted many Hasidim to the Bobov sect in Brooklyn
before his death in 2000.
Once a Hasid of the
Rebbe came to see him, despondent. The Hasid worked as a school teacher, believing
that was what the community expected that of him. But didn’t want to be a
teacher. So he came to the Rebbe,
because he was at a loss. He didn’t know what to do with his life. The Bobover
smiled and told him simply, “the world is a great big place. Find something you
love and do it!”
The Rebbe encouraged the Hasid
to find his own rotze. So many others
had told him what to do. For once, someone listened to this man’s heart, and affirmed
his own inner stirrings! The Hasid loved antiques. One day he saw a small
classified ad in the paper for appraisers. He answered the ad and eventually learned
to be an appraiser. He loved the job because he loved antiques and used his photography
skills. He discovered his purpose. All he needed was someone
to give him permission to open his eyes to what he saw himself doing.
We find in Netivot Shalom, of Rabbi Sholom Noach
Berezovsky, a passage that is often quoted at baby naming. It speaks to this
same notion: “every individual is a small world unto himself…No person has ever
been identical to another person since the creation of the world, and therefore
each and every person has a special shlichut,
a distinctive purpose for which she was sent…The beginning of all avodah, all service is discovering for
what particular purpose one was sent to this world.”
We can’t look to others
to set our goals for us, just as we don’t depend on them to run the race in our
stead. It is up to us to be resourceful, to discover who we are and what we are
called to be.
You Can’t Always Get What you Want: Resilience
When you get your first
choice the rest is easy. What really matters is how you handle your second
choice. Perhaps you have a rotze, a
desire, a goal or a purpose, but you still feel thwarted in reaching it. As the
Rolling Stones taught us long ago “You can’t always get what you want but if
you try sometime you’ll find…. you get what you need.”
Getting our second
choice can be an important time to reflect on our behavior, to learn from our
mistakes and to look to the future. Even if we believe that we had no control
in the outcome, we can learn something from every loss.
This is an essential
practice for us to model and teach our children. It’s called resilience.
Our Yom Kippur liturgy
offers a striking poetic image of resilience in a piyut that we will chant in a
little while: Ki Hinei Kachomer, we
are like clay in the hands of a potter. We can be shaped, formed, changed by
the slightest touch or the heaviest hand. Like silver in the hands of the
silversmith, we can be melted, bent, turned, with grace or with clumsiness. Like
fabric in the hand of the embroiderer. We can be stretched, cut, folded,
embellished, with love or in anger.
As the Talmud explains,
“The School of R. Ishmael taught: It can be deduced
from glassware: if glassware, which, though made by the breath of human beings,
can yet be repaired when broken; then how much more so a person, created by the
breath of the Holy One, Ha Kadosh baruch Hu.” (Sanhedrin 91a).
It is only when we
harden to life that we become fragile. As the potter’s wheel of life turns, we
adjust and adapt. To be like clay is to develop resilience.
Groundhog Day: second chances
One of my favorite
movies of all time is “Groundhog Day.” I could watch it over and over again (in
fact watching it once is like seeing it over and over again). In case you’ve
never seen it, Bill Murray starts out as a complete jerk, a selfish, boorish
weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, PA, to report on Groundhog Day. But at the end
of the day, he gets stuck in town in a snowstorm. When he wakes up in his hotel
room the next morning, he has gone back in time to the day before, to Groundhog
Day. There he remains in a perpetual loop, always waking up to “I Got You Babe.”
However, he does not remain the same. By reliving each day, working hard at
learning French, mastering the piano, and, most important, learning about the
people around him, he grows into a caring, sincere, and thoughtful human being.
Bill Murray gets a
second chance, over and over again. Second chances is what the yamim nora’im, the Days of Awe are all
about. We call it teshuvah. Rambam teaches that true teshuvah is achieved when you are in the same situation as before
and choose to behave differently. When I
was learning to play piano, my mother used to tell me “practice makes perfect.”
Though I know that I’m far from “perfect,” whether playing piano or anything
else I do, I have become a true believer in the value of practice. We go back
to the same scene and try again until we make change.
In Jewish tradition, second
chances are built into the universe, an essential aspect of our spiritual
make-up. The rabbis teach:
Before
the world was created all that existed was God. Then God decided to create the
world, and carved it out, but it did not stand up. This can be compared to a
king who wants to build a palace: without a foundation in the ground, the king
could not begin building. Similarly, God carved out the world, but it did not
stand…until God created teshuvah. (Pirkei D’Rabi Eliezer, Ch. 3)
Teshuvah
is the foundation that enables us to try again and again and again and
eventually to transform our lives. We will make mistakes. That’s a given. We
will be disappointed with the results of our hard work. We will not always get
it right. We can’t stop time like Bill Murray, reliving Groundhog Day over and
over. We will never be perfect. Yet we do get more than one chance.
But if perfection is
not the goal—what is?
Being proud to be the
very best number 2 there is, or number 6 or number 723. Being proud, because
you have worked hard, looked for second chances, and been satisfied with the
unique purpose of your life, whether you are second fiddle or the back-up
singer.
The poet Rilke wrote
words in “Letters to a Young Poet” that can be our guides as we enter into Yom
Kippur and ponder the purpose of our lives:
“You carry within you the
possibility of creating and forming an especially blessed and pure way of
living. Train yourself for that—but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as
long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self,
then take it upon yourself, and don’t hate anything.
“Those tasks that have
been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult, and
everything is serious.”
One final story,
probably very familiar to many, but one I could not leave out, about the modest
Rabbi Zusya. As Rabbi Zusya he lay dying, his students came to his bedside and
found him crying.
“Why are you crying?”
they asked.
He answered, “All my
life, I have tried to be like Moses. But I have come to realize that when I
stand before Ribono shel Olam, God
will not ask me, why were you not like Moses? God will ask, why were you not
like Zusya?”
Today we contemplate
the purpose of our lives. We cannot help but consider, how will I be judged
when it’s all over and done? Am I trying to be like Moses? Am I trying to be
like Zusya? Or am I simply trying to be the very best I can be: the best rabbi
or the best doctor or social worker or organizer or teacher or journalist or lawyer
or receptionist or advocate, the best parent or child or sibling or grandparent,
the best friend or lover or citizen you can be?
God does not expect you
to be the best in the world, just the very best you can be, right here, right
now. Every day, in every encounter, in every moment.
May we all be blessed
to discover our rotze, our heart’s
desire. May it be big enough so that we do not succumb to despair, and so we have
the grit, the resourcefulness and the resilience to become the very best we can
be. Ken yehi ratzon.