“Treading Lightly – The Stuff in Our Lives”
By Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein
Temple Israel of West Palm Beach
Copyright 2012
Kol Nidre Sermon - 2012
Gut
yuntif.
If you were to look inside my car
right now, I hope you would see that I have been trying to help a friend of
mine help get their elderly aunt’s home ready for sale. There are a ton of things in the car that are
going to Goodwill just as soon as the
High Holy Days are over … but, in the spirit of the season, I am going to
confess that there just might have been a few things of my own in the back of my
car before I added in my friend’s
aunt’s belongings.
I’m
not quite sure when it started, but before I moved here, the back of my car had
become a place where things with unknown homes would go to die … and, since
I’ve decided this is also the season of sharing, I have decided to share a few
things I recently found in the very back of my car.
[Sharing of Things from “Rabbi Olshein's Box” … items placed on the table as they are
explained …]
Here is a water bottle that still has
the cleaning information in it from a conference I attended in 2008 ... which I
have never used.
Here is a container of "Equal Spoonful" ... which I don’t actually use.
Here is the sermon from the Senior
Rabbi at my old congregation from 2009 … it was a really good sermon, but I’m not
sure how this ended up in the back of my car.
Here is a fur collar from an old
coat which doesn’t fit me anymore, but somehow made it to the back of my car.
Here is a cord from my refrigerator
from my house in Las Vegas, with the water filter … I have no idea why I kept
this, because (as far I know) it can’t be recycled ... the last time I lived there full-time was in 2008.
Here are a pair of shoes I no longer
wear.
Here
is my grade report, from undergrad, from 1987 … I’m not sure why I kept it this
long, except to remind me that I received a “B” in my “Introduction to Business”
class, which should have been an easy “A”.
Here is the x-ray from when I broke
a needle off in my toe right before traveling to El Salvador to volunteer,
which I thought I should frame one day.
That was in 2007.
[Back to Reality]
Every
so often, we hear stories on the news, and now via reality TV shows, about
people who have so much stuff in their homes, that there is only a path from the
front door to back door, so much so that people actually feel trapped in their
homes. They have invested so much into
the things that they have, that they
have literally boxed themselves into a world they feel as if they cannot escape.
But
not everyone is an extremist like we see on the news, thankfully. There are also people who have homes with so
much stuff in them that they are afraid, or embarrassed, to open the door: to friends, family, and even to
strangers. Heaven forbid something go
wrong with the water heater or the sink or the toilet and a contractor would
have to come over to fix it … and, yes, I admit, I have even heard myself say
it a few times – “no, no, no, no need to come over … why don’t I just bring it
to you?” Or, “why don’t we just go out?”
Yes,
the cases we hear about on the news and in reality TV are often tied to mental
illness, but that’s not what I’m talking about tonight. I’m talking about the random stuff that has
accumulated like the box of “random stuff” I have in the back of my car.
You
know that stuff that just seems to accumulate, maybe not in your car, but in your
spare room? Or maybe you have something
you call your “junk drawer” … or maybe you have “junk drawers” – plural – or
something we could call “the closet we dare not open”? Or, since there are very few basements here
in Florida, perhaps it’s your garage … maybe you can’t put the number of cars
in the garage as the garage is advertised to hold? OK, I know it is ONLY me … for many years,
the garage in my house in Vegas held one less car than it was advertised to
hold.
Now
listen, I know some of you out there are thinking, “Oh my God, we hired a
hoarder.” No, the new rabbi is not a hoarder. : )
And
I know there are more than a few of you out there who are thinking, “Rabbi, I
sure do know people like that, but thankfully, you’re not talking about me. I am organized and neat and I live by the rule: ‘A place for everything, and …” everyone, say it with
me, “everything in its place.’” Just so
you know, for those of us who DO have a junk drawer or a scary closet, we just
can’t understand folks like you.
[It’s Not Just Physical Clutter that
Tie Us Down]
But
a discussion about clutter really does apply to everyone, because it’s not just
the physical clutter we have in our
lives that tie us down … each and every one of us here tonight share what I
call “mental clutter” … you could call it, “emotional clutter” … or maybe you
prefer the idea of calling it, “relationship clutter,” but we all share it, and
that’s in addition to any physical
clutter almost all of us have.
So
now that I’ve given you a couple some different options regarding types of
clutter, I want to challenge everyone to take a moment and literally close your
eyes … now, no one fall asleep while you are doing this … I want you to think
about what kind, or kinds, of clutter you have in your life right now?
How
long have you been carrying your clutter around with you?
Or,
do you not actually carry it with you, but instead it is tied around your ankle
like a ball and chain, with you dragging it from place to place, taking it with
you wherever you go?
And
then I have to ask … do you want to be carrying your clutter with you?
[PAUSE]
And
now, open your eyes.
[Dealing with the Physical Clutter …
and What It Represents]
Sometimes,
when we think about the clutter in their lives, we do jump to the physical
things – we really do jump straight to the stuff, like the stuff in my box … and we
have to ask ourselves, why do we keep this physical clutter … why do we keep
this random stuff?
There
are many reasons we hold onto things … sometimes the clutter we have comes from
a sense of obligation.
You
see, we might have inherited things from the people we have loved and lost,
with all their stuff being added to our own stuff, leading to a sense of
obligation we feel to keep it.
Instead,
though, what we truly should keep
when people are gone are the memories
of the people we have lost … not that broken lamp ... or the painting they loved ... or the half-set of dishes that don’t match ours that we never use.
By
the way, please note that I am not saying that none of us should not treasure
the things we inherit from our loved ones, quite to the contrary, I’m saying we
actually should TREASURE the things
we inherit from them … but, if we don’t have special feelings about a
particular item, like if that chipped bowl in someone else’s pattern is never
used, then we should not keep it out of a sense of obligation.
I
told you a few minutes ago that my garage in my house in Las Vegas didn’t just house
cars – in a strange way, my garage there is a sad place. To this day, there are things still in that
garage that brought my mother joy while she was alive – and now they sit
collecting dust in my garage – it is now her things that have gone to my garage
in a place so far away to die.
So
now, when I’m visiting my house in Las Vegas, every time I see these items, I
think about what they represented to her – and all I feel is guilt that I don’t
appreciate them the way they deserve to be appreciated ... and that they serve no
function, just sitting there in the garage collecting dust.
Authors
Suzy Ormond and Marla Cilley, both experts on how we handle our home lives and
our stuff, both write that we might want to consider a paradigm shift about how
we manage our stuff – that perhaps we should release this stuff if we are not going to use it … and let it bless someone else.
Blessing
someone else with things that have lived in my garage for far too long? Or bless someone else with the stuff that
never sees the light of day in my closet? How about some of the stuff in my not yet unpacked
boxes since I moved to Florida, now three months ago?
Someone
else just might find joy in what
sits in those boxes and in things I have not used in far too long … and by
holding onto these things, these things which are not bringing me joy, I might
be keeping someone else from receiving that blessing.
What’s
another reason we might hold onto stuff we don’t need? We might simply feel overwhelmed about the prospect of going through our things and
physically getting rid of the items.
We
all lead such busy lives that once something is put aside, it finds a new home,
and it now lives “there” … so, if it is comfortable “there,” it becomes OK to
leave it “there” … and suddenly we don’t even notice how the garage became full
or how the closets are overflowing or how suddenly there is no space under the
cabinets any more … and now it becomes too much … I simply can’t do it … it is
simply overwhelming … it will never get better … so I am not even going to try.
[The Effects of Paralysis]
Which
means it becomes a question of, if I can’t get the house totally clean and
spotless, why should I even bother?
This
mentality of perfectionism – only the best will do — becomes paralyzing … our
mental clutter affects our physical clutter and paralysis takes over … if I
can’t do it all, and do it perfectly, well then, just never mind.
But
maybe there is another reason we become collectors of “stuff” … some of us may
have lived through the depression, or have been children of the depression
which may have given us the idea of “but I might need it later” or “I’m saving
it for later” … and when exactly does “later” come?
Before
she died, Erma Bombeck wrote that, if she had to do it over again, she would
use up that nice perfume she had received as a gift and had been saving
for a special time … and the good china?
We don’t use it because the kids are too small and they might break one
… but how else are our children going to learn how to handle delicate things? And those beautiful candles with unburned
wicks? Their purpose for existing is to
be burned – to release that special beautiful fragrance hidden inside.
And
that dream antique sports car that we are afraid to drive on the road? It was made to be driven – not to sit kept in
a garage, some might say, just waiting to fulfill its destiny out on the open
road.
And
what about anything that we might not want to use because we might mess it up? How many of us have visited homes with
plastic on the furniture?
Yes,
we should all save for a rainy day, but should we save “that” and “that” and “that” for a rainy day, whatever “that” is for you?
[Dealing with Relationship Clutter]
I
can hear some of you saying now, “But, Rabbi, Yom Kippur isn’t about stuff … it’s about people … it’s about
relationships … it’s about making amends for the wrongs we have done and
working towards being better people, right?”
Yes,
that’s true, but how we treat our stuff, and how we let our stuff treat us, can
sometimes tell us a lot about how we treat other people.
For
example, just like keeping “stuff” out of a sense of obligation, what about the
relationships we stay in out of a sense of obligation?
On
Rosh HaShanah morning, you heard me
quote the biblical verse, love your neighbor as yourself, and then I corrected
myself saying, actually, I want you to treat the neighbor better than we treat
ourselves, because some of us don’t treat ourselves very well.
Are
we in unhealthy relationships out of a sense of obligation?
I
know it is hard to fire a friend, but sometimes friends aren’t really friends
and they can be very destructive. Even
worse, sometimes, it is a family member … remember that old line when you are
flying on an airplane to put your oxygen mask on first before helping those
around you. Sometimes, relationships can
be toxic … sometimes we have to save ourselves from destructive obligations in
our lives if we are to move forward in a healthy way … yes, we have to fire
them in a nice way, only after we’ve tried everything else to salvage a
relationship, but sometimes we have to move forward without them in our lives.
[Paralysis in Our Relationships]
And,
yes, not only do we sometimes feel paralyzed about dealing with the stuff we
have in our lives, sometimes, we feel paralyzed in our relationships as well.
Are
we actually having honest conversations with the people we say we love? Are we telling people when they have hurt
us? Are we communicating honestly about
our needs and desires and the things that are important to us? Or, are we closed down and have we stopped
sharing what is truly going on in our heads, and in our hearts … do we feel
paralyzed and have we stopped communicating?
Do
we expect all the people in our lives to simply know what we are thinking and
feeling? I mean, really, we’ve lived
with them for how many years, don’t they KNOW that what are doing is bothering
me … I mean, how could they not know
that I don’t like that after all these years?
Why should I have to actually tell them?
Really, if they don’t know already … then I’m not going to tell them …
they should just KNOW.
And
then the resentment grows and grows and we carry it around with us, sometimes
with the other person never even knowing how much pain we are in. How many of us expect the people in our lives
to be mind readers? How many of us have simply
stopped communicating about anything important with the people we say we love?
[I’ll Deal With it Later … But When is
Later?]
And
then there are the folks who are the savers of the stuff … I know I’ll need
that sometime later, so I don’t want
to use it now … I better get a few more in case I need them someday.
Sometimes, the clutter in our relationships with both ourselves, and
others, builds that way, too.
So
I have to ask … is there something that has been bothering you for a long time
that you haven’t talked out? Do you carry this with you such that it affects
your outside life?
When
we say the words of the ASHAMNU, did acknowledging that we all commit the offenses of keeping grudges or being narrow-minded
jump out – have we become those stiff-necked people the Torah always warns us
of becoming?
Have
we let these negative feelings fester
to such an extent that the relationships we are in today are not as we would
hope … are they still affected by something even someone else may have done years ago?
I
think about all the folks I know who say, “it will get better when” and I think
of all the folks I know who say, “I’ll get to that soon” … and I think of all
the folks who say, “I’ll go see them soon.”
I hear, “now is not the right time for ___” and then fill in the blank
with whatever people say is important to them.
But
the reality is that what we say is important to us is not always
what is important to us … and
what we see as being important to us
is not always what we should see as being important to us.
[Reality vs. Perception Regarding How
We Rank Things]
If
I were to ask everyone to think about what our lives look like and write down the things that are really important to you tonight, I think we
would see lots of common things on our lists … I’m guessing that somewhere near
the top of that list, I would hope to see the word “family,” with maybe
“friends” close by (and, of course, since I’m a Rabbi, I hope I would see “living
a good life according to your Jewish values on the list”).
But
if I asked you to then open up your calendars
on your phones or look at your paper calendars and compare how you spend your time with what you say your priorities
are, my guess is that, for far too many of us, the two would not match.
You
see, our calendars really show our
priorities … they show the stuff with
whom we choose to interact … they can tell us how we have chosen to spend our
limited time on earth. In a sad, scary
way, our calendar really is our Book of
Life.
While
we are here, each of needs to tread lightly … of course, we need to tread a
little more lightly physically, understanding our relationship to our stuff …
[Each
individual item taken out earlier to be put back in the box …]
I really don’t need this sermon
anymore … it can be recycled.
This water bottle and fur collar should
both be donated.
The refrigerator cord and filter can
be thrown away.
This canister of Equal can be used.
This pair of shoes can be donated to
our new shoe collection drive we are holding on October.
I’m not sure what to do with my
grade report and I really am going to frame that x-ray, but both of them need
to go back in the box for right now.
[Treading Lightly in Our
Relationships]
But
more than we need to be careful about
the physical stuff in our lives, we
also need to tread lightly in our relationships
with both ourselves and others.
We
need to understand that, as we choose
to spend time with another person, or other people, we deserve to be treated well, just as they deserve to be treated well, too, which becomes easy once we
truly take the time to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Throughout
this HHDs season, I have referred to the phrase from Pirke Avot, al shloshah d’varim, on three things the world stands, al haTorah, on Torah and learning, v’al haAvodah, on worship and service to
God and others, v’al g’milut chasadim,
and on acts of loving-kindness. And for
the world and, yes, I’m also talking about our own little personal worlds,
these three must remain in balance.
But
as I said before, it must start with the relationships inside each and every one of us.
We must let go of the harm we
are holding inside … the negative feelings that only hold us back and, to the outside world, they might not even be
known. We must release the hurt, we must release
the anger, we must release the guilt
… we must show ourselves acts of
loving-kindness.
For
if we do not dare tread lightly on our own souls, why should anyone else
bother?
Yes,
it is Kol Nidre … now is the time to let go … now is the time for letting go both
physically and emotionally … just imagine … if we can make this happen … imagine
how each of us can transform our lives into what we say we want them to
be.
Gut
yuntif.
