Thinning the Fog
Last night I had the privilege of teaching mini mussar to the 8th graders. We talked about Loving and Being Loved, and I was really proud of these kids for digging deep and finding it within themselves to discuss these ideas in a real and sincere way.
One of the ideas that came up was this: whom is it easier to love? Animals or people? The kids agreed that while it's a different kind of love, animals are easier to love. When pressed to discover why, we found that we understand why animals behave the way they do - because animals operate largely on instincts. But humans are often inscrutable. In fact, there's a whole field devoted to why humans behave the way they do: psychology! Humans have all kinds of complicated reasons for their choices, often unknown and misunderstood even by themselves. And it is this that makes humans unlovable sometimes. They act in ways that seem hurtful, rude, and selfish. They have reasons - some good and some lousy - but we don't know those reasons, and maybe don't even care.
Tim Urban says it well in his article "A Religion for the Nonreligious." He describes a "fog" that most humans live with, that makes it so difficult to see the big picture in our actions.
The fog explains all kinds of totally illogical and embarrassingly short-sighted human behavior.Why else would anyone ever take a grandparent or parent for granted while they’re around, seeing them only occasionally, opening up to them only rarely, and asking them barely any questions—even though after they die, you can only think about how amazing they were and how you can’t believe you didn’t relish the opportunity to enjoy your relationship with them and get to know them better when they were around?Why else would people brag so much, even though if they could see the big picture, it would be obvious that everyone finds out about the good things in your life eventually either way—and that you always serve yourself way more by being modest?If not for thick fog, why would anyone ever pinch pennies over a restaurant bill or keep an unpleasantly-rigid scorecard of who paid for what on a trip, when everyone reading this could right now give each of their friends a quick and accurate 1-10 rating on the cheap-to-generous (or selfish-to-considerate) scale, and the few hundred bucks you save over time by being on the cheap end of the scale is hardly worth it considering how much more likable and respectable it is to be generous?
What's so interesting to me about the "fog factor" in understanding human behavior is how useful mussar, and other forms of Torah study can be, in thinning the fog - which, according to Tim Urban is the goal of life. Thinning the fog is where we step of our opacity for a minute to glimpse a higher path, a better way, a more lucid guess into the inner workings of human behavior.
I can't let this ramble go to print without mentioning the historic World Series. There are so many mussar moments that arise even in a seemingly benign rivalry like baseball. There's envy, dissing, money - all the stuff that makes human behavior interesting. When we are caught in the fog, we can remind ourselves of our long-term goals for life. In other words, we can thin the fog.
When our kids study mussar, they are getting the unique privilege of doing just that. Let us know if you or your child would like to try a class. You have my guarantee that the fog will be thinned for you in a way you will never forget.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi Koval
