Tuesday Morning Torah – March 5, 2019

Life can be stressful. Whether we are navigating interpersonal relationships with our partners, children, grandchildren, parents, or siblings, dealing with colleagues at work, or interacting with the strangers that we meet along life’s daily path- it can sometimes be very difficult to keep a calm and level head.

That is why I was particularly struck by the lesson that we studied in my Mussar class past week. The topic of the evening (and practice for this past week) was “equanimity.” I much prefer the Hebrew term “menuchat ha- nefesh,” literally meaning “a resting/quieting of the soul.” How can we learn to quiet the soul? How might we learn to keep a level head by calming our emotions and soothing our souls in those moments when we feel surrounded by chaos, anger, and anxiety? Menuchat Ha-Nefesh does not ask us to distance ourselves from strong feelings or emotions, but rather invites us to learn how to become aware of our emotions, as we strive to:

be a calm soul who is like a surfer who rides the waves on an even inner keel, regardless of what is happening within us and around us. Even as the waves are rising and falling, the calm soul rides the crest, staying upright, balanced, and moving in the direction the rider chooses. Equanimity is the quality of being centered in yourself, though at the same time being exquisitely sensitive to the forces that are at work all around, or else you will be vulnerable to being tossed around by the sorts of unexpected waves that crash in on everyday life. (Morinis, Everyday Holiness, 102)

What can I do when I feel the temperature rising within myself as my children are fighting over the “massive injustices” of who gets to pick the TV show, or why they might actually need to clean up their rooms? How should we react when a colleague at work yells at us for making a mistake on a task, or being five minutes late to a meeting? What should you do if your adult children are giving you a hard time for the ways in which you interact with their children (your grandchildren), or they are constantly nudging you about their concerns for your health and safety as you are aging, or they are not giving you the attention that you feel you deserve in a given moment? These are just a few examples that immediately come to mind when it comes to situations in which we might want to employ the midah (attribute) of Menuchat Ha-Nefesh.

And just how might we strive to do this? It starts with peace of mind. As Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe taught:

Ask yourself:What do you need to do to gain peace of mind? Should you be exercising, getting more sleep, praying more often, meditating, or finding a good therapist? What steps can you take to bring more peace of mind and soul into your life?

Menuchat Ha-nefesh also asks us to stay focused on our responsibilities in any given moment in which we are experiencing stress.

An unceasing inner gaze towards one’s responsibility leads to remembrance, remembrance leads to concern, concern leads to confidence, confidence leads to strength, and strength leads to serenity and wholeness, internally and externally, in thought and in deed. Rabbi Avraham Elya Kaplan

To whom are you responsible in that moment of heightened stress and anxiety? What is your task and how can you go about re-focusing yourself and your energy in that direction, shifting your focus away from the storm that is raging all around?

These are the questions that this midah invites us to answer? This is how we might begin learning to bring a bit more peace and quiet into our daily lives. We are asked to remember, each and every day, that:

our emotional state at any moment is not determined by the intentions and actions that someone else (or life) throws in our direction. All sorts of feelings will come, as they do in our lives, but when we are possessed of equanimity, our inner core is not left open to being whipped around by external experiences. We are freer than that (emphasis mine). Morinis, 103-104

So this week, when you find yourself in a stressful situation- try to refocus. Remembering the importance of peace of mind, of focusing on our responsibilities, and on the control we are blessed to have over our emotions, gently remind yourself to look beyond the current situation and restore a sense of inner balance. It is a lifetime’s worth of work- but your soul, quite literally, depends on it!