Don’t Worry Be Positive

Don’t Worry Be Positive

All eyes are on the unrest in Egypt and in other Middle East countries. The pundits, talking heads, bloggers and writers are weighing in with all sorts of insights and thoughts. What do you think? How do you feel about it? Are you worried?

How should we think about it, how should we feel about it? What does the Torah say? This of course makes an assumption that the Torah is relevant and timely and my bias is that the Torah is relevant and timely.

Knowledge or intelligence precedes all. For example your DNA has all the intelligence and information about how your body will develop and then it begins to develop. The intelligence of nature preceded the actual development of nature.

Judaism maintains that the Torah preceded the world and is the intelligence and information by which the world was formed. In other words if we could trace the intelligence of everything in this world back to its original source we would discover the Torah.

So knowledge and information is actually above us not in front of us. In our world it seems that knowledge is in front of us as we see with technological advances that we know more today than previous generations. But in truth we are simply discovering what is there and until we discover it it is above us. The Torah comes from above and has all the information in it albeit in a somewhat concealed form.

Just a few weeks ago our Hebrew School had a grandparent’s day in honor of Tu B’Shevat. As part of the program we had the student’s pair up with their grandparents or family friend and fill out information about the grandparent. Where they were born, lived, went to school, favorite subject, funniest memory and other things. Then we collected the papers and read some information from each page and the students ha to identify their grandparent etc. it was a lot of fun. After the day was done one of the grandparents came forward and told us that their grandchild learned more about them in this hour then in their whole life.

If knowledge precedes us then we look to our parents and grandparents for guidance lessons and insight, but if knowledge is ahead of us then our parents and certainly our grandparents are old and outdated. Judaism is based on respect and reverence of proceeding generations for exactly that reason to instill in us the notion that knowledge proceeds us and although we have had remarkable technological breakthroughs knowledge is actually above us and we should always look up to the Torah for wisdom, guidance and direction.

So what does the Torah say about how we should think and feel? In one line, “Tracht Gut Vet Zain Gut”, “Think positive it will be positive”.

It does not say to stick your head in the sand or put on rose colored glasses, rather it says to think positive.

Interestingly it does not say feel positive it says think positive. The reason being that our heart and our feelings are more susceptible to fear and worry then the mind. Of course we do the worrying in our minds but it is our emotions that are worried not our brains. Intellect is cold and calculated it is not emotional by nature. When the heart senses the possibility of loss it can start panicking and then uses the mind to worry and many times tries to manipulate the brain in dealing with the fear. The same is true for greed. The heart desires something and gets excited about it and then it manipulates the mind to assure that it will get it.

Although the brain can control the emotions and knowledge precedes all, however when it comes to response time the brain is slower than the emotions. Which explains why we say or do things and then regret them. What happened? Simple the emotions got there first, you said what your emotions were screaming you should say and then when the brain showed up you realized you said or did the wrong thing. Our objective in life should be to train ourselves to wait for the brain to show up before we say or do anything.

Fear usually comes from the emotions and thinking positive is something the brain is capable of doing. It would be very hard to tell someone who is worried to feel positive. But if you tell them to think positive that is something even a worried person can do. Our brain can control our emotions.  It is not that easy but it is possible and doable.

So when we are faced with an unknown as in the case with the unrest in Egypt we get worried, our emotions lead we feel a sense of fear, what will this mean for Israel, what will this mean for world peace? Are we ever going to be safe?

As our emotions are going wild we need to use our mind to think positive, to think of a positive outcome. The Torah tells us that ultimately there will be peace on earth; ultimately all people will unite together with one purpose and one goal. Israel will be safe and the Jewish people will survive.

This applies to our interpersonal lives as well. When someone does something to us do we think about it in a positive way or in a negative way. Do we try to assume that the person who is not treating us the way we should be treated is themselves in pain and needs our love or do we assume that they just don’t like us and therefore we need to respond back in kind? Thinking positive brings positive results in its wake; on a micro level, when you react in a positive way to a negative situation you usually get positive in return. On a macro level it works in a similar way through positive thinking we create positive energy which creates positive change.

What politicians and world leaders should or should not do they are all welcome to contact me and I will share it with them privately. The focus here is on us and how we should respond to world and personal events around us.

Tracht Gut Vet Zain Gut, Don’t Worry Be Positive

Have a Happy and Positive Shabbat

Rabbi Zalman Marcus

P.s. Bassie made it home before the storms and I am in therapy