Vaera - Some things never change
Exodus 6:2 - 9:35 | Ezekiel 28:25 - 29:21
Summary: It would be wise to stop expecting things that cannot change to ever change. And it is wise to continue to remember that some things definitely can change.
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“There are some things in this world, Captain, that will never change. And some things do change.”
Consider those things in your life that you have accepted as inevitable, intransigent, and non-negotiable. No matter how much you will it, it is clear to you that there is nothing that can be done to change these things. You have simply accepted them as part of life. What’s on that list? Gravity. Taxes. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I suspect that there are actually a lot of things on those lists that we have effectively resigned to accept, from the movement of enormous economic systems and tectonic plates to matters that are very local and personal. Maybe your list includes how you yourself show up in the world, or how your marriage goes, or the dynamic in your family. Maybe it includes your tendency to react in certain ways in certain situations, or how other people act or react. I, for example, struggle constantly with sadness and selfishness. Maybe it applies to a trauma that is so deeply embedded in your experience that you cannot imagine it having any less of an impact. Those things, it seems, will simply never be any different.
Alongside the list of things that cannot change, we also carry lists of matters we feel are definitely up for grabs. It seems within reach that an election could have a real impact; that personal choices around vaccines could affect the way COVID goes; that therapy can change certain aspects of how we are; that a silent retreat meditation practice could shift the situation; that a health scare or sudden loss could wake us up, at least for the moment, toward realizing that our priorities are askew. That medication could do some good.
We all carry around these lists - in one pocket, there is a list of things we believe cannot ever change, and therefore it is not worth trying to do so, and in the other a list of things we believe can (and maybe should) change, and therefore should be approached accordingly.
And what if both of those lists are largely inaccurate? What if we have unjustly accepted that certain things cannot change when they actually can, and we keep butting up against things we think can and should change, when they are actually quite solid?
If we were to find out that those lists are inaccurate, we would certainly live our lives quite differently. We would have to take a good, hard look at how we direct our expectations, assumptions, fantasies, resentments, disappointments, prayers, appreciations, and incriminations. It would be quite a transition.
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So what if you were in Egypt 3300 years ago and sticks started turning into serpents, and then back into sticks? Water is blood is water. Sand is lice. Ashes are boils. Hail contains fire. More importantly, the powerful people (Egypt) are powerless, the powerless are powerful, and there is suddenly a future that includes freedom and the land of milk and honey. Your lists would change.
Most of those things don’t happen much in the 21st century. These days, sticks are sticks and serpents are serpents. Sand is sand and lice are lice. So we should stop expecting miracles and acknowledge when a fantasy is a fantasy. Some things will never change. Some parts of us are set in stone. But there are things on our lists that actually shouldn’t be on the list on which we have put them. There are a lot of things that can change - certainly anything that involves the human spirit. We may well reach the land of milk and honey.
Rav Kook writes that, with the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people were not simply free. They were Free. They had become unbound-able. It became impossible to assume that they could not make different choices, could not grow, could not become more self-aware. You could never pin down their souls like you could not pin down God. Any assumption that a relationship could not improve or that a dynamic could not change became, simply, false.
There are certainly things about us that cannot and will not change. We should stop pretending that they will change. But our capacity to make good choices around those things remains fully operative and intact. I believe that I will always have a tendency toward selfishness and another toward depression. I don’t think those are going anywhere. Those go on the not-changing list, and I can stop wishing/pretending/fantasizing that they will go away. But my ability to make better decisions around those things, to learn how to manage them and deal with them (and even harness them) is completely open and full of possibilities. “There are some things in world, Captain, that will never change. And some things do change.”