Fierce Discouragement: 11 Things
Rejecting inner and outer tyranny on a Tuesday morning
1. Mind control. But it’s not what you think. I’m talking about my own mind. Maybe “control” is too strong. Mind direction. Mind wrangling. Mind training.
2. On my run this morning, instead of my usual playlist, I listened to a 29-minute podcast from Yeshiva University. Host Zissy Turner was interviewing Ilana Kurshan, an educator, translator, and author of a memoir, if all the seas were ink. My independent study teacher, a rabbi in New Jersey who is on the faculty of my new school, had recommended Kurshan’s book based on my interest in the places where ancient teachings intersect with our present-day stories. I ordered the book, and found this podcast episode.
3. I was aware, as I listened, that much of their conversation, which focused on Daf Yomi, was over my head. Daf Yomi is an approach to Talmud study that entails reading one page of Talmud a day for 7.5 years. At this point in my life and classical Jewish education, I have read exactly zero pages of Talmud and am only at the inception of understanding what the Talmud is, its structure, and how we, as Jews, find our way into it, engage with it, learn from it, wrestle with it, and find relevance in it.
4. At one point, Kurshan says: “I think it would be meaningful If more people wrote about their Torah and their learning and took it more personally, because I think that… you have to make yourself naked before the text. You have to be willing to let the text resonate on your deepest levels, to be vulnerable before the text, and let the text speak to you in the places where you hurt, and where you’re grieving, and where you’re not completely healed, which is what I tried to do in my book… if more people were willing to showcase both their brokenness and their wholeness then more people would be able to heal perhaps.” Amen.
5. Now, up until that point while listening, I had noticed old thoughts arising, the kind that I have grown so accustomed to I greet them like a weary host, Rumi’s Guest House and all that. These guys show up day after day, saying, we’re not sure you’ve got the stuff, lady. They are a real glass-half-empty bunch. In fact, if this crew were to author a book, it would be called Fierce Discouragement. Their main shtick is to psych me out. For a long time, they succeeded. (As an aside, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky writes: “For us, the immediate menace, as we face horrible possibilities in the realms of media and education, may be not captivity but discouragement, a word that may seem too mild, but whose root meaning is heart-lacking – and that, I think, describes this literally dreadful moment.”)
6. I may not be learned when it comes to Mishnah and Gemara, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn. My heart, at least, isn’t lacking. I may be getting a late-ish start, but that comes with certain benefits, too. When I heard Kurshan speak about the power of vulnerability and what it has to do with text study, I felt something in myself step forward, as if to say, oh, that? Now that I understand.
7. To be inspired by those who know so much, to seek out teachers, is so very different than to cower in shame from all I do not know. It’s an old habit of mine to keep emphasizing my lack – lack of Jewish education up until now, lack of funding, lack of confidence. Womp womp.
8. I am not embarking on Daf Yomi study, but I am embarking on rabbinical studies, and friends, it is daunting. But yesterday, I had an image of a kid learning to ride a bike. I imagined that moment, wobbly maybe but upright, when the parent lets go. “I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” I hear myself saying. But I am doing it. I’m peddling. I am not riding the Tour de France. I’m just here on my little street, and my parent is back there cheering. “Yeah! You got it! You’re doing it!”
9. The world is changing faster than my psyche is capable of comprehending much less keeping up with. Remembering that we are not the first to confront such evils is actually quite helpful. For example, take Pirke Avot 2:2: "Be careful [in your dealings] with the ruling authorities for they do not befriend a person except for their own needs; they seem like friends when it is to their own interest, but they do not stand by a man in the hour of his distress."
10. I cannot control Elon Musk today. I can, however, control or at least do my best to direct, focus, and train my thoughts and actions in ways that are beneficial or at the very least, not harmful, to myself or to others. This means it doesn’t matter how learned I am – I am learned enough. I can study. I can teach. I can read. I can run. I can write. I can make my five calls. I can check on my people. Most powerfully, I can cast aside discouragement and despair, no matter how tempting these may be. When so many freedoms are being threatened, revoked, and trammeled, these choices feel like one tiny way to reject tyranny – inner and outer.
11. Wishing I could wrap these 11s up with something profound. But instead, I will just close here and offer this – do what you can today to remember your strengths, your power, and your inherent goodness and worth. Notice when your mind lets in a crew of discouraging guests, and maybe escort them to the exit. You don’t have to know everything or be all the way healed or be anyone other than who you are to matter and make a difference.