Rebbetzin Esther Offengenden
mini-quiz: home is where you are.... what?
Loving, feeling, being open is a risk.
Perhaps it is the greatest risk in life. You can be betrayed. (And how many examples of betrayal are there all around us?!) You can be abandoned. (Don't people get abandoned?!) You can be hurt, struck in your most painful spot. It is especially hurtful when it is precisely the spot you yourself told them about, trusting them and opening up.
Closeness is always dangerous, fraught with difficulties and suffering.
There are only two “BUTS”:
1) A lack of closeness, loneliness in all its forms, rarely makes anyone happy.
2) We live in a world where the concepts of “painful” and “bad” are confused. In our understanding, “painful” and “bad” are almost the same thing. But they are not.
We know that on a physical level, “pain” can be lifesaving.
It is through pain that the body shows us that “there is a problem,” that help and urgent intervention are needed. There is nothing more frightening than when “it no longer hurts”—when there is no sensation.
I heard the account of a man who was wounded in the Six-Day War. After being wounded, he lost consciousness and remained unconscious for quite some time. When he woke up in the hospital, he overheard a conversation between the doctors and realized that his condition was essentially hopeless. His spine was so badly damaged that, of course, he would not be able to walk. The young man tried to move his toes and discovered that he could not feel them. From terror and exhaustion, he lost consciousness again. The next time he came to, he felt an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Still not quite aware of where he was or what had happened to him, he got up and started walking, then a second later fell from a sharp pain. When the staff rushed over to him, he was laughing. Many years later, as he told this story, he said that never in his entire life, either before or afterward, had he felt such complete happiness. Happiness because he was in pain!!! Hooray for pain! — it meant his legs were hurt, but they could be healed, and he faced neither paralysis nor amputation.
Spiritual pain works in much the same way. What is alive feels pain.
When a married couple comes to me for counseling, one of the first questions I ask is:
- How do you argue?
In my view, people who answer, “Argue? Why would we?” are in the most difficult situation. It no longer hurts them. They no longer care. They have neither the energy nor the desire even to hurt each other.
Let us sum up. We take on the difficult task of building a family mainly for the chance to feel emotional warmth and share our feelings. Yet in many families, feelings are precisely what the spouses lack. The main reason is that we are afraid to open up and reach out. We expect our partner to take the first step, preparing only to respond, only to follow their lead, because that is much easier and less stressful. In the end, it may turn out that neither spouse ever takes the risk of leaving loneliness behind and stepping toward a real life together.
There is only one way out—someone has to begin!
Let it be me.
Why me?
Dear reader! If you are with me now, if this topic has interested you and you have spent time on it—time surely taken away from other necessary activities—then you are someone who understands the importance of family relationships for yourself, for your loved ones, and for your children. Moreover, you are strong enough to tell yourself:
- I don't know everything. I can understand something new, and it may help me.
The rule is this: In a family, the person who begins to act is the one who is stronger and braver, who better understands the importance of family relationships.
Most likely, that is you.
to be continued