25 Oct How’s Your Donkeyvision?
I walked into the social hall this past Monday to pick up my kids after camp was over for the day. A camper who I know from camp and Hebrew School approached me and said “don’t move!”
Confused as to why she wanted me to stand still, I asked what she meant by that. She responded, almost pleading, “don’t move to Florida. Not you and not your family!”
I was honored by her sincere plea (and a bit sad at not being able to grant her the request).
I must have been thinking about those words “don’t move,” because the next day as I was studying the weekly Torah portion (as divided into 7 daily sections) I came across someone demanding the opposite, “move it!” When the demand wasn’t heeded, the person proceeded to continuously strike the victim.
The aggressor was Bilaam, the non-Jewish prophet commissioned by the Moabite King Balak to curse the Jewish people. The victim was Bilaam’s donkey, who refused to budge while traveling to Balak because, unbeknownst to Bilaam, an angel of G-d was blocking the way. Bilaam was not privy to seeing the angel, but the donkey was.
After the scene of the hapless donkey getting whipped repeated itself 3 times, G-d opened the mouth of the donkey, allowing her to speak, assuming the role of a spokescreature for animal rights.
The donkey exclaims, “What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?!”
Rather than appear either surprised at his donkey speaking or contrite at beating the poor animal, Bilaam doubles down on his frustration and responds:
“For you have humiliated me (in front of Balak’s officers). if I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now!”
At that moment, G-d opens Bilaam’s eyes to actually see the angel blocking the path. It’s a frightening sight– this angel, sword drawn and all. Billam quickly dismounts, prostrates on the ground and changes his tone while confesses his sin. In a moment, Bilaam’s gets an extremme attitude makeover.
To an extent, we often face similar Bilaam moments. We have days where we are overwhelmed, more often than not (thank G-d) by everyday hassles rather than a major life crisis. We get bogged down by the accumulative drip-drop of small-stressors, and before we know it, our ability to cope with the little stuff gets super challenging. We feel like we’re playing a game of psychological “whack-a-mole,” trying to put out the little fires, and sometimes it’s the one additional little annoyance that tends to set us off.
Yet sometimes we are privy to a Bilaam moment. Hashem opens our eyes and we are privy to realizing that things aren’t as overwhelming as they seemed just moments ago.
Nothing has demonstrably changed; it’s just that what moments ago seemed insurmountable all of a sudden seems doable. Perhaps we are now aware of a helpful detail we weren’t privy of before, someone offers to lend a hand, etc.
The million-dollar question is, outside of those occasions where we are gifted with seeing that preverbial angel or “hand” of G-d, clearly realizing that Hashem is directing and orchestrating all of the events in our lives, how can we equip ourselves with the tools to come to that awareness on our own?
While I can’t fully encapsulate the lessons in this message, I can try to give a valuable tip, as incorporated into Jewish thought.
The 3rd Chabad Rebbe taught that the primary method of removing stress and worrying thoughts from our minds is by redirecting our mind toward other matters. In practice, this is done by distracting your mind with something positive, which not only deflates the negative feelings by not giving them attention but also leads to positive emotions.
In other words, when you notice an unwanted thought creep into your head, don’t just try to chase the thought away. That’s like trying to force ourselves not to think about a donkey being struck– our mind will gravitate towards the image! So rather than trying to chase the stressful though away, distract yourself by exchanging the thought for something more positive—which serves a dual purpose:
By investing yourself in a thought that calms you, the unwanted thought is discarded and the negativity that it brought will quickly dissipate. In its place is a positive thought that will shape your mood and life for the better. Filling your mind with a positive thought, and focusing on it, creates a positive feedback loop. The positive thinking directs the mind to positive things and activates positive emotions that create a positive posture, attitude, and feeling.
At this point, we can tend to (much more) objectively assess what’s going on in our life and be able to deal with the stress far more effectively and strategically.
At the end of yesterday’s weekly Torah class, someone asked me why we aren’t privy to major miracles like we were in Biblical times. I gave two answers, one of which was that if our internal antennaes are attuned to finding Hashem’s imprint in our daily lives, we will find many small miracles on a regular basis.
For Bilaam, even though he was able to see things from the donkey’s perspective, it was ineffective; he kept following the way he wished to be led, and proceeded to attempt (unsuccessfully) to curse the Jewish people.
We can learn from his mistake. G‑d has given us something far, far superior to “Donkeyvision”: the challenge of thought-control and the gift of discernment.
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