Years ago, a wise Rabbi told me:
“Your character flaws are like your car’s High Beam: They can be quite irritating to the person facing you, hitting them squarely in the eye, while you remain blissfully ignorant to your condition - until someone flicks his headlights and alerts you to your problem.”
We all occasionally receive wake-up calls to self-betterment as we walk the path of life. The startling flash of recognition can obliterate our mental fog, the mindless living that provides perfect cover for a negative pattern. But the mental clarity itself isn’t change. It’s just the beginning. The key to change lies in proactively tackling life’s details, making better choices in our minutes, hours and days.
In other words, we change our character by incrementally changing our mindset and behaviors.
Take an example: You’ve come to a sudden awareness: Your family feels that you’re distracted and distant when you’re at home. They’re disappointed. You had no idea, but – once it’s been mentioned - you can see what they’re saying. So you resolve to do better.
If that’s as far as it goes, you haven’t much chance of real change. Change is more likely to happen when you reframe your mindset and perspective, by rethinking how you view your family and your place (responsibility?) within the family.
Yes, change can happen. But it’s a slow, incremental process; sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step backward, but it’s progress nonetheless.
In the big picture of one’s life, polishing life’s details - inch by inch, action by action, day by day - can add up to a more brilliant existence.
We can see this in the rhythm of our history. G-d gave the Jews a cosmic wake-up call when He took them out of Egypt. With the Exodus revelations, G-d showed the Jews that they needed to rise above their slave mentality, their spiritual paralysis. And they indeed ‘woke up’.
Once liberated from their spiritual slumber, they began a seven-week journey toward Sinai, using each week of their journey to refine a different primary dimension of life. And at Mount Sinai they, having prepared themselves for almost two months, received the Torah and transitioned into a new reality: The Jewish People.
Coming out of Passover, we are now re-experiencing these seven weeks – called the ‘counting of the Omer’ – which present an opportunity to tackle seven different categories of our personalities.
Put in simple terms, the weeks’ exercises focus on how we:
(1) Give of ourselves to others
(2) Respect others’ space
(3) Keep focus on the genuine objectives in our relationships
(4) Find the tenacity to do the right thing, even when it’s not easy
(5) Experience the humility to accept what is expected of us
(6) Recognize the power of binding with our loves ones, as distinct from just interacting with them
(7) Communicate
G-d’s wind is at our backs, especially this time of year: Day by day, bit by bit, we can make change happen.