Living Well in a Difficult Time

In the face of large events, such as the tragedies we experienced one year ago on Sept. 11, there is a tendency for the individual to feel small and powerless. What can we do to make a difference? What can we do to have an impact on this history as it unfolds and shapes our lives?

I see many people looking to our leaders for solace, direction and guidance. I want to suggest that while our leaders are important, our lives are really shaped by each one of us, in our daily actions and interactions. I don't believe that we, as regular people, are powerless as large events unfold. In a very real way, we each have profound power to shape and influence the quality and experience of life in our world.

I am deeply influenced by the Jewish tradition's emphasis on the centrality of the individual in changing the world. Teshuvah (change, growth), in its essence, is the work of the empowered man or woman, making an individual decision that moves to action. One of the essential messages of the Jewish New Year is that more than anything, each person's actions count.

First, I want to stress the incredible importance of being actively present in our lives. Our technology challenges our ability to be fully present in any one place, at any one time. We can be called, beeped, faxed, emailed and Fed-Exed anywhere. So much vies for our attention. We live in a world where we are both everywhere and no-where.

To live well during a difficult time is to try to be fully present with the people around you. Being truly present with another human being is giving that person your full attention. It is looking into their eyes rather than over their shoulder at the TV. It is being willing to engage in thoughtful conversation over dinner even though you are tired.

Being fully present is being comfortable to sit and be silent with a friend. This requires both physical and emotional presence: if you care about your friends and family, it's important to spend time with them. Once you are physically there, then it is essential to be emotionally involved and available.

Sometimes people are not present because they are uncertain of the words to say, or they fear they won't have the right answers to give. But being there in this difficult time is not about knowing the right answers or what will happen next. It's certainly not about being able to explain the root causes of international terrorism.

To a large extent, it is about being willing to make direct, focused, compassionate contact with the regular people who are part of our lives: our friends, our parents, our children, the person sitting next to you in class. Those are the interactions that shape the way we conceive of our communities, make us feel at ease or on edge and build webs of connection in our daily lives.

Harold Kushner tells a story that I've always liked about a boy who tells his father that he going over to help a friend who just broke his new bicycle. The father asks "What do you know about fixing bicycles?" The son answers, "I don't know anything about fixing bicycles: I'm going over to help him cry." I think of people who have helped me when situations seemed dark.

In my experience, such people didn't flood me with wisdom, they didn't magically fix things, they were certainly not perfect: they were willing to spend time, to talk and listen. Never underestimate how very important is it for you to be present, and hopeful, for those people directly around you.

That leads me to my second point, which is the importance of conveying hope. While many people have been singing "God Bless America," the song that has been going through my head recently is Israel's national anthem, "Hatikvah" The Hope. In this era of instant gratification, it can be a profound gift to those around us to convey that it is possible to remain hopeful, even for a long time, before our goal is achieved.

I know from my rabbinic work with families in grief, that a key to a family's recovery after experiencing tragedy is having one person in that family who holds and articulates a vision of hope. Many families will make it through a difficult time if just one person is able to look through to the other side of a crisis and continues to say that things will eventually be all right. Living well through this tragedy is being able to convey to the people around us, even in our fear and uncertainty, that our lives will go on and we will continue to work, love, play and celebrate.

Finally, I want to stress the importance of asserting the truth that good eventually inches out evil in our world. We know that evil exists. That wasn't news on Sept. 11. There will always be the haters but when we examine our history, we maintain that still, good will eventually triumph. This is a powerful message and one that is at the core of my religious tradition. Living well in this difficult time is to accept and convey that truth; I don't believe we have another option.

These are demanding times, but we don't have to be superheroes or great national leaders to have an impact upon our immediate world. If we are able to be present for the people around us, remain hopeful and assert that good will eventually inch out evil in our world, each one of us can make a profound contribution.

Rabbi Jeffrey Summit is the director of the Hillel Foundation and an associate chaplain