Ki Tetze - Making choices when we don’t have to and not making choices when we do have to
Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19 | Isaiah 54:1 - 10
Summary: We often make choices when it would be easier and better to not have to choose. And sometimes we really should make conscious choices, but we get so caught up in the momentum and pressure of things that we abdicate our responsibility for making choices.
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There aren’t many times when I wish I lived in the former Soviet Union. In fact, there is exactly one situation in which I imagine there being some advantage in making my residence in that place and time, and it is specifically when I am in a grocery store staring at a display of tea or hummus or the like, confronted by a wide variety of products from which I must choose. As lovely as it is to be afforded the opportunity to select from English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast and Scottish Breakfast, a person like myself is likely to walk away from that situation with an unnecessary amount of distress, having used precious time and brainpower trying to figure out whether there is a right answer to the question, “Which tea should I buy?” In the former Soviet Union of my imagination, there is exactly one kind of tea. Would you like tea or no tea?
You can certainly understand why people like Steve Jobs (black Issey Miyake turtle neck, jeans, New Balance sneakers) and Mark Zuckerberg (grey Brunello Cucinelli tee shirt, jeans, blue sweatshirt in colder weather) don’t put any energy into their clothing selection. As Zuckerberg said, “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.” Though we could certainly debate whether he is in fact serving any community outside of his shareholders, the reality is that, for most of us, spending more than a nominal amount of time selecting one’s wardrobe or tea is unnecessary and a waste of precious time.
And yet, it is likely that most of us are making thousands of decisions a day. Researchers at Cornell found that people make an average of 226.7 decisions about food alone. Some dubious sources claim that the number of choices we make in a day is around 35,000. Even if the number of conscious decisions we make is actually 1/10th of that 35,000, that’s a lot of choices to make. If that’s true, and you enter into 1/10th of those 3500 decisions with a sense that there is a right answer and a wrong answer and you don’t know which is which, that means you worry about having been wrong hundreds of times a day. What does that do to your confidence?
As concerned as I am about the effect of so many decisions we have to make, I am more concerned about the situations in which we do not make decisions when we should. So often, a situation comes at us and we feel absolutely sure of what we should say or do, without taking even a moment to breathe, to wonder, and to ask (let alone pray) about what is possible and what is best.
I have deep admiration for those who can find choice even when the pressure is on. Maybe that pressure comes from habit. Maybe the person feels that there is simply no time, and a decision must be made right now. Perhaps there is pressure from friends, peers, bosses, parents, or children, pushing for a specific outcome, conveying in all sorts of ways that there is only one choice, and it is completely obvious, and if you choose differently, then you are a fool or a coward, or you don’t have enough faith, or you don’t understand, or you are overthinking, or you don’t love them enough.
Here’s a story about soup. Rebbe Natan of Breslov was eating soup when a student walked in. As the student told Rebbe Natan about a decision he was facing, he noticed that Rebbe Natan was sitting with the spoon in midair. Rebbe Natan told him that he was having trouble deciding whether he should eat that spoonful of soup, or whether he’d had enough. As neurotic as that might sound, most of us are not asking whether we have eaten enough and could stop. We are likely to eat until the food is gone (don’t ask me about the bat mitzvah at which I ate about 20 roles of sushi, simply because it was there.) It is actually an incredible act of will to stop eating and ask, “Am I still hungry?”
One of the most ardent threats to choice is momentum. I will keep eating because I have been eating until now. I will continue to work this job because I have been working at this job for 10 years. I will remain married to this person because we have been married until now. I will take Advil when experiencing pain because that’s what I’ve done until now.
In this week’s Torah reading, we find many instances of intentionally broken momentum in order to provide a moment of depth, insight, and connection amidst a strong current of pain, oblivion and loss: a man has gone to war and taken a woman captive. He may marry her - but must wait a month to make sure that he still wants to. A man has two wives, and the one he loves less is the mother of his first born: as much as he would like to give the double inheritance to the son of the beloved wife, he is not allowed to do so. A person is walking to work and sees a lost object - she must take responsibility for it until the owner is found. Taking eggs from a bird’s nest, a marriage goes awry, a person wants to convert, or donate money, or collect on a debt - in each of these situations, the Torah opens up a moment of awareness and choice. A person is expected to breathe, take stock, look around, understand the issues and the options, and then make the best possible choice.