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The Importance of Difficult Emotions – Life Lessins

Life Lessins Blog

The Importance of Difficult Emotions


The flood of feelings starts with dread, that horrible experience of barely breathing while you wait with your heart in your throat because you know something terrible is coming. You just don’t know yet who it’s coming for. Maybe the names you’re about to hear on the radio won’t be someone from your community, so that at least you can resume breathing while driving to work. But then the guilt sets in – why should it matter whether you know them? No matter which soldier fell last night, someone’s mother will be crying uncontrollably this morning.

The names are read while you wince. You think about the fact that each of these precious souls may have spoken to their loved ones on the phone just yesterday. How is it possible that that was the last time? It can’t be, it’s inconceivable. The utter finality is too difficult to comprehend. Your brain doesn’t allow you to process the information. 

You begin to think about the crying mothers. Can the human body contain so much pain? Could yours? You try to block out the horrible thought. At least your children are ok. But then the guilt starts again – what right do you have to feel relieved when a family is reeling from the worst news imaginable?

You try to call up the higher part of yourself, the knowledge that at least they died al kiddush Hashem, defending their country and their people. But you’re having a hard time tapping into that voice. Why? You just heard a shiur about it yesterday! Yet you’re not able to quiet the pit of pain rising in your stomach. The devastation overpowers. Maybe you’ll try to listen to another talk after work today.

You suddenly notice that anger has crept in. First just a pinge that has managed to break through the shock. Then a growing surge, a rush of rage that pounds on your insides and sends your mind into a frenzy of hate and vengeance. You think of who to be angry at – the enemy, the leadership, the world, G-d? The anger builds until eventually the wave breaks, and you’re plunged back into a sea of sadness – a state of being you have become too familiar with lately. 

The conversation in your head only stops because you’re now sitting in the parking lot outside your office. How you got there, you’re not sure. But you know it’s time to turn off the channel – on the radio and in your head. You feel bad – again – because you feel like you owe it to the deceased to keep them in your thoughts and not go on as if life is normal. Because it certainly isn’t. This is not what daily life is supposed to look like. You shouldn’t wake up wondering if your neighbor’s son’s face will be plastered on the news today. Why can’t we just be left alone, you wonder. Why is it so difficult to live here in peace? But somehow, in a place deep down that you can’t fully explain, you’re proud to be part of it anyway.

You deliberate what to do and end up just sitting there, in silence, perhaps hoping that your thoughts will reach the family and provide some solidarity and support. You also send a quiet thank you to the soldier for their sacrifice on your behalf. You don’t know this family, but it doesn’t matter, because right now, you’re a part of them. Finally, slowly, you take a deep breath, turn off the car, and force yourself into an expression that will make it seem like you’re doing ok. What you don’t realize is that everyone around you is doing exactly the same thing.

Dealing with difficult emotions

The above description is a version of the daily roller coaster that Jews in Israel have become accustomed to over the last few weeks. War has brought with it an entire array of difficult emotions – dread, worry, fear, pain, guilt, agony, anger, sadness – that cycle through the mind and heart on an ongoing basis. There are bright spots and glimmers of hope, for certain, but the unfortunate reality in Israel right now is that negative feelings are never that far away.

The human impulse when faced with pain is to try and shield ourselves from it. This is a much-needed survival instinct, an integral part of the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism that protects us in times of danger. We come with an inborn “never again” defense system: once we’ve felt pain in our lives (which we all have), our minds and bodies try to ensure that we’ll never have to feel it again.

But should we go along with the inclination to protect ourselves from pain? Is it right, or even healthy, to avoid the brunt of emotional distress? Is there value in letting ourselves dip into our well of tears, or should we follow our impulse to turn off the radio earlier and not hear news that will make us too upset?

An individual decision

These are questions that each person must answer for him or herself. The quagmire of human emotions is sufficiently complex that it deserves to be treated on a case-by-case basis. What follows is one perspective, and it will only be right for some. 

Over the last month, many of us have hit the point at which we wonder how much suffering our nation can take. We don’t know where over 240 of our loved ones are, we have lost too many of our sons and daughters in combat, and our hospitals are full. As individuals, too, we have asked ourselves how much we can realistically handle before we lose it and are unable to be there for the people who need us. No one has the answer to this question other than the individual asking. A person who needs to pull back from terrible news in order to maintain their ability to function should feel no shame in doing so. 

However, sometimes we sidestep the sting of negative emotions when perhaps we should not. Feeling pain is hard, scary, inconvenient, daunting, uncomfortable, or all of those things. And while we trust that everyone has a valid reason for attempting to bypass emotional distress, we should also consider that turning away from heartache can mean that we are skirting two critical dimensions of what it means to be a person and a Jew.

Sharing the pain

Much has been written in recent weeks about the Jewish imperative to be noseh b’ol im chaveiro, to share the burden of our friends in pain. As this war continues, it is increasingly easy to adopt a mindset in which things are happening somewhere adjacent to our lives, not directly in them. We hear about deaths, but they feel more like numbers than people. We see faces, but we scroll further. We listen to the radio, but the next news report catches our attention. The losses don’t sink in.

We must not succumb to the numbness of familiarity. Being part of the Jewish People means that we feel for each other even when the pain is ongoing and unbearably difficult. We cannot turn away from the suffering of our extended family because there is no way to share in their misery without feeling it ourselves. These are our losses; these people belong to us. It does not matter if they lived nearby or far away, if they were religious or not, if we knew them or if we didn’t – a Jewish brother or sister is and always will remain part of our family. We are not separate from them. They are us.

Closeness and brotherhood are measured by the degree to which we hold each other in times of distress. Everyone is happy to share tidings of joy. But only the people closest to us share in our deepest pain. You never forget the people who hugged you while you cried.

Going deeper

But there is a second dimension to letting ourselves experience sorrow: experiencing pain is the gateway to experiencing joy. 

Life presents us with immense turmoil. None of us have ever managed to escape that fact, no matter how much we’ve tried to outrun it. Pain catches up to all of us.

One kind of pain is located in the heart, in a place that doesn’t show up on X-rays. It’s an invisible agony, the kind you walk around with all day and are sure everyone sees, when often no one does. It’s the kind that you can’t write a manual for or put a bandaid on. It’s even possible to tell ourselves that it’s not really there.

But it is. And, if we let it in and learn to make space for it, it can turn us into something more than we were before it appeared. Painful feelings have a sinking quality, a natural trajectory towards the deepest parts of ourselves, where they touch our soul and permeate our being. When we learn to let them flow through us and discover how not to resist their rising tide, we find that they have also pushed open the walls of our hearts. Because while struggling hardens us, cradling pain softens us. We can feel more, be sensitive to the suffering of others, appreciate life more profoundly, love more deeply, and even feel greater joy. The capacity to hold pain creates this inner cavity, this ever-expanding chasm that grows with age, in which feelings reverberate and we can experience the gamut of human emotions in all their fullness. In a way, the corridor of pain leads us to the richness of life.

Chazal say that one who has mourned the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash will rejoice in its rebuilding (Taanit 30b). Perhaps it is also true that only one who mourns destruction will be able to rejoice when it is restored. Mourning and loss are the chisels that carve out the space in the human heart where bliss can eventually reside.

If we want to truly rejoice when our soldiers and captives come home, we must allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss when they don’t. No one looks for heartache, but when it comes our way and we reach for ways to make it stop, we should consider that one pathway forward is to let our feelings happen and see them through to the other side. In this way, if nothing else, at least they will have changed us.

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1 Comment

  1. Thank you David , there are so many ways to run away from the pain it takes courage to embrace it . At the other end of this with hashems help we should merit together to see great things !