Our subconscious, like a
little voice, has this way of infecting our personalities in ways we are
completely unaware of, until an interaction with another of our species brings
up the question “Why did this person treat me this way?” Suddenly we’re looking
for answers, and if we look closely and listen carefully to those wiser around
us, we will indeed find the answer.
I had an experience last
week with someone whom I felt humiliated me and embarrassed me for no reason
that I could see at the time. I felt hurt and I got angry. I asked a close
friend “What is it about me that makes some people treat me this way? I’m good
to people, I don’t humiliate people”. At the end of the week I heard a story
told by a very wise man that put it all into perspective and I found the answer
to “Why do some people treat me this way”. I now know what to do with this
information and how to act upon it to change and the answer could not have come
at a more appropriate time.
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The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again", they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, "the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"
"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic-- was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."
In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.
Then it
happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started
to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could
join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had
once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant
center of light and spirituality in the realm.
So here in this simple story, was the answer to my question that I had asked my close friend earlier in the week and had asked of myself for pretty much my whole life. There is a small quiet voice inside my head that tells me I’m not worthy, that I don’t really deserve respect, kindness and caring. I’ve had this voice since I was a child and when I was younger, before I had accomplished so much, the voice was quite loud. As I got older and started to accomplish things, the voice got quieter but it is still there, mulling around in the back of my brain somewhere. This is a common thing among children who have been abused and neglected and unfortunately we spend our lives trying to make this voice wrong by letting people who use our weakness against us, determine how we feel. We try over and over to sooth those feelings of being mistreated and neglected by trying desperately to gain respect, love, kindness and caring from people who are just not able to give those things. Somehow, we think in our heads that by accomplishing this, we will make everything that happened to us as children, right. The voice tells us that if we can get those things from THESE people, that we will finally be worthy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And so, through out my life, I have not only allowed people into my life that did not treat me with the respect, kindness and love that I deserved, but it became a vicious circle in which I found myself unable to escape. People would treat me badly; I would not stand up for myself but found myself unable to ignore what they did or said that made me feel so bad. Somewhere inside, I believed I deserved to be treated this way. This attitude at times has made me very unhappy and later in life has caused bouts of depression, anxiety, and at times the inability to get out of bed and face the world for fear that someone, somewhere along the way was going to hurt me again.
The truth, the absolute truth, as I see it now, is that I am God’s child. No matter what happened to me as a child, no matter that the people who raised me, were really messed up and attempted to instill in me this feeling of unworthiness, the facts speak for themselves. I come from a long line of people who have endured persecution, hatred, banishment and death. Throughout our history, at any given point, an event could have happened differently that would have made it impossible for me to even be. Yet, here I am. In the living flesh. God saw fit to allow me to be created, allowed me to be born when I could have ended up as a back alley abortion, allowed me to be raised in such a way that caused me to seek the truth of who I am, caused me to seek answers and in every way has provided me with people in my life that have showed me the answers, whether they meant to or not.
I can not control what people think of me, I can not control the way some people treat me. There are people in the world who see someone like me as weak and they attempt to use me to boost their own feelings of inadequacy within themselves instead of enjoying my company and allowing us to each explore and enjoy the gift of each other. I have no control over these people or how they behave. I do however, have control over how I react to what they say and do to me. I most assuredly am not a victim. I have control over the things I tell myself and that little voice in the back of my head that tells me I’m not worthy to be treated with respect, love, caring and kindness. I must, from now on, remember this story and tell myself each and every time I have an instance where someone treats me with disrespect or unkindness that I am a gift; a gift to myself, a gift to the world and that there is a reason, a good reason that I was created in the first place, and because of that, I am totally worthy.
God has carved out a special place for me here and has given me a special purpose. I may struggle sometimes to know what that purpose is. I’m not perfect; who is? But I am a work in progress that if only because of my people’s history and how far I have come to be here in this place, at this time, I deserve respect, love and kindness. And anyone who does not show me that? Well, they are the ones in fact that are not worthy. They are not worthy of my time, my interest in any ideas they are attempting to manipulate me with, or worthy of my presence in their lives. I am a gift from God to this world, as we all are, that they can not appreciate and so it will not be given to them.
The Torah makes it clear that unkind words and deeds are as abhorrent to God as murder, greed, lust or any other cardinal sin and to associate with people who do these things, I am helping them to sin.
So, there, in the story of the Rabbi’s Gift and in the first, most sacred and holy text lays the answer to my small little problem. I can not control the wind but I can control my sails.
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