Positive Word Power

How can you say you are a religious Jew when you eat without making a brachah?” Simcha asked his teenage brother, Moshe, who was hungrily attacking a plate of French fries.

Moshe had just come back from six months at a special yeshivah for “kids at risk.” He had conquered his demons, and even though he was not ready to conform to the standards of his parents’ very conservative community, he felt confident in saying he was now completely religious. He put on his tefillin each day. He covered his head. But most importantly, he felt Hashem loved him, and he wanted to grow closer to Him.

 Simcha, on the other hand, was blessed with a straightforward, idealistic nature. He could not understand the twists and turns of his brother’s mind.

“Either you’re religious and you do what the Torah says, or you’re not religious and you do what you want,” he told Moshe. The painful message to Moshe was that his claim to being religious was very much in doubt.

“Either-or” is a false premise that identifies a person with his flaws. If someone is “either kindhearted or selfish,” then their one act of selfishness is enough to overturn dozens of kind acts. If he is “either calm or temperamental,” then the one time he lashes out in frustration belies the hours and hours he maintained his composure.

That is not, however, an accurate portrayal of the human personality. In truth, every person is a composite of every trait Hashem invested in mankind. Different personalities arise from the varying proportions of these traits within any given individual. By judging people on an “either-or” basis, one strips them of their positive traits and their potential to grow. Rather than spotting and cultivating the seedlings of greatness in a person, the “either-or” evaluator lets the seedlings wither and cultivates the weeds instead.

Breaking free of this perspective is essentially an exercise in positive thinking. The child who rejects the mother’s request to help with the dishes can be told, “You’re lazy!” thus erasing with one word all the child’s previous efforts to be helpful. Or the same child can be told, “But you really are such a big help. I’d really appreciate if you could help me now too. I count on you!” The latter response recognizes the spark of helpfulness in the child — even if it is now quite small — and helps her identify herself with this trait.

Perhaps the best way to break out of “either-or” thinking is to look within oneself. How many times does one fight the urge to say “no” to a favor? To skip or speed through a mitzvah? To say something cruel or insulting? Those urges prove that even if one is the most helpful, zealous and soft-spoken person in the world, the other side exists within him as well. No one is “either-or.” All of us are “this and that.”

In Other Words

When someone says or does something of which I disapprove, I will try to counter the impulse to judge him according to that trait by thinking of something he has done that reflects a positive trait.

Reprinted with permission from powerofspeech.org