The Other Day I saw a Bear… Our Narratives and our Reason
Yom Kippur 5780
Join me if you know this one….The other day, I met a bear, a great big bear, oh way out there…. He looked at me, I looked at him, He sized up me, I sized up him….
Sure, many, if not all of us, could continue this fun and whimsical camp song to one of the various endings. But, what does happen when you see a bear?
I would imagine, trying not to assume of course, but I would imagine that to most of us who are residents in the area, seeing a bear is exciting, sure, but a regular enough occurrence that we may snap a photo or two, share the story over the coming days..maybe, but then file the experience away until the next time. It may not illicit the famed and very real response we call: Fight, Flight or Freeze.
And for some of us, those less seasoned to living in the mountains, and perhaps those visiting, we may in fact certainly feel that Fight, Flight or Freeze response. I distinctly remember a moment during my first year or so in Tahoe. Enjoying a summer meal in my backyard with three teachers from Temple and our older son, Caleb, who was about a year old at the time. When a bear came to enjoy lunch too! While my guests, my friends, our religious school teachers, with no less than 40 years of living in Tahoe among them, turned their gaze to appreciate the bear and I don’t believe they ever even got up from their chairs. I, on the other hand, made sure Caleb was safe, then grabbed our dog Sasha by the collar to attempt to scare the bear! Riling Sasha up to bark and growl, I did my best! I chose to Fight!
My guests, these seasoned Tahoe residents, barely batted an eye, while I, on the other hand, experienced this moment quite differently. I had to protect something, I riled Sasha up, and tried to scare the bear off… My collection of experiences led me to quite a different response than others. I did not pause, or stop to discuss the situation. I did not use my reason to discern the best response, I jumped to action, I made a decision, a flash judgment, and using my intuition alone, made that snap judgement, at least in the psychological description, to Fight!
Our lives are full of moments just like this one. The collection of experiences that make up our identities shape the human being that each of us is…. We draw on them constantly to make decisions, to make judgements and to continue charting our human path through this life on a daily and moment to moment basis. These experiences collectively make up the stories of our lives, they are the narratives we carry that help us define our identity.
Sure, in the moment of seeing a live, large and sometimes aggressive animal in the wild may indeed require us to forego the process of reasoned decision making and force us to act and act quickly. But, what about the millions of decisions our complex minds make on a daily basis? Are they always the best? Most reasoned? What about when we discover that a decision, a value position that we have held, or that we just argued for, may in fact not be in line with our best self?
What about this example, a story we surely know well: I am Sam, Sam I am….Do you like green eggs and ham? Would you like them here or there? Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse? I do not like green eggs and ham, I could not would not in a house or with a mouse…I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I am. Try them, try them and you may, try them and you may I say. Sam, if you let me be, I will try them and you will see…. Say, I like green eggs and ham! And I will eat them with a mouse and in a house….I will eat them anywhere…. Thank you, thank you Sam I am!
Certainly another whimsical example of our quick responses, and one used by Dr. Suess to help young people learn to read. And, of course, it is kind of fun to mention “HAM” in the Temple! But, perhaps, just maybe there is more to this story, and more that reveals just how brilliant it is. The unnamed protagonist, whom we will call Knox, who eventually tries the Green Eggs and Ham is first annoyed by Sam, then disgusted by the thought of green eggs and ham. This is probably because eggs and ham are not supposed to be green, and in fact when food becomes green it usually tells of spoilage… Yet, as the fun story concludes, this unnamed protagonist - Knox - teaches us more than how to read. Knox helps us identify a natural phenomenon of being human - that we often fail to try something new, yet we just may like it even if it does not seem appealing at first. Knox, at first, is unwilling to even try the dish, and then reasons that he therefore would not like the entree no matter the setting, the company and the conditions. His reasoning is not based on reason, but rather justifying the decision he’s already made! Yet, in the end, showing a true openness to the newfound experience, Knox is willing to enjoy the green eggs and ham here and there, in a house with a mouse….anywhere!
We are all Knox! It is simply part of being human. We make decisions, we make judgments that are steeped in our own life experience…our narratives. In this room, we share, at some level, the Jewish story as the first chapter of our personal identity. And, we layer upon that our own stories. (NTHC: Because John is from rural Minnesota and Bob from Philadelphia, they hold, however slight, different ways to engage with Judaism. Because Asher embraced Religious School so strongly and Hannah is choosing to engage in Bat Mitzvah by her own volition, this paints a new version of an old picture for their parents.) (TBY: Because Jane lived in Israel and Karen has yet to visit, they hold, however slight, different ways to engage with Judaism. Because Layla was raised in Tahoe and Ezekiel joined us at age thirteen, their visions of B’nai Mitzvah are certainly different pictures.) It is through the lens of these experiences that each and every decision we make, our value judgements and our behaviors become yet more layers, more chapters in our lives. Just like Knox, though, often times, we see only green eggs and ham, and using our intuition, we make a decision. From there, our confirmation bias, which is our tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of our existing beliefs and theories, begins to work and we reason NOT what is necessarily the best decision, rather the ways we can support our earlier choice, our claim.
Sure, the most often benign black bear from around here, and Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham help us see this human challenge in this light hearted fashion. How do we make decisions, respond to those of others and how do we reason, do we reason? And, what about the big questions? The issues? The pressing issues of the day, in our democracy, in our world? A friend of mine, Alissa Nourse, who is a local leadership coach and organizational consultant drawing on the work of Brene Brown, a PhD Social Worker and author of Daring Greatly, shares a powerful example of our flash judgments and intuition. Perhaps we can recall a moment when someone shared a story to which someone responded, “Who does that?” A seemingly benign response of disbelief, or even disgust of another’s choice. But, what this does, Alissa teaches, is that it devalues, maybe even dehumanizes the other, the one WHO DID THAT. Why? Because someone did do that and it is someone who makes up more than seven billion others in the world; someone whose narrative, whose story is simply different than your own.
How do we respond to others, and based on what, do we make our decisions, our value judgements and take a stance on issues? Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, a professor of ethical leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business and an author, presents important perspectives on the way we make moral decisions, the way we reason and the power of our intuition. During numerous TED Talks and through his writing, he presents clear ideas about how we, as human beings, as social beings, are driven to hold our ideas and our ideals. At one point in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, he presents a finding of his and numerous other psychologists that, “We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct the actual reasons why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgement.”
Yet, we stand here on this day, this Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, to explore the ways in which we have reasoned well and reasoned poorly over the previous months. We engage with one another, with our collective voice in prayer and with a deep acknowledgement of our imperfections. Could there ever be a better or more appropriate time to re-engage with the ways we have reasoned in the past? Perhaps by re-reasoning, not based on the desire to confirm our own story, our singular perspective, but to engage with a broader and deeper view of the world around us, can we strengthen ourselves, each other and our world.
The Kol Nidre prayer is perhaps the best example of this notion. The reality that we articulate, as we stand for all three recitations of this medieval prayer poem, is that we are imperfect in our judgement, our ideas and our ideals. Rabbi David Stern, senior rabbi of Temple Emmanuel in Dallas and past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, writes, in the New Mishkan HaNefesh - the Reform Machzor:
In its emphasis on humility, Kol Nidrei provides a corrective to the toxic certainties of polarized discourse. What if we approached each other with the humility to recognize that our most confident conviction will always be qualified by the limits of our own knowledge and understanding? In its haunting melody and strangely legalistic language, we begin to sense the twilight truth: our high horses too often stumble, and our soapboxes stand on shaky ground. Kol Nidrei grants us the gift of sacred uncertainty: the chance to begin this new year with a sense of what we do not know, rather than a narrow certainty about what we do. It’s what Buddhists call “beginner’s mind.” What if every time I were ready to proclaim some self evident truth, I allowed Kol Nidrei to whisper in my ear, “Says who?”
Last month, our nation witnessed what some consider the most significant political experiment in U.S. history. 526 voters from forty seven states joined in Texas for three days to engage with issues, but more so with each other. One participant from Kennewick, Washington shared, "Life affects us all very differently. We all have a story to tell and all of our views are important. There's no right answer for everyone. But if people take the time to hear (and truly listen) to other people and their story, then just maybe you'll discover something that you never considered before."
This powerful exercise in American Democracy was not designed to sway opinions, rather it sought to understand if democracy was still alive. One thing is for certain from this experiment, in each piece sifting the results from this monumental gathering we notice to the power of story, the import of the narratives we hold and the way we understand our world through the lens of our own, singular, experience. As Haidt also posits to help us understand this further, “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” He continues to point out that the stories we know best are the ones about ourselves and these are what Dan McAdams, a leader in the field of narrative psychology, refer to as life narratives. The challenge, they both contend, is that these narratives are not necessarily true stories, rather they are selectively recalled and often reconstructed versions of the past that help us connect to an idealized vision of the future.
As recounted in a New York Times piece about the event, personal narratives may inform our own view, but they can help shape those of others too. The article shared that, "In one room the debate among a dozen voters over what to do about the Affordable Care Act moved from one personal testimonial to another: One man's deductible rose to $3000 from $500 after the law took effect. Another man's family premium had gone up to $2600 a month. Across the table, one woman said her father had been found to have colon cancer right after the law forced him to acquire insurance for the first time in his life. “He would be homeless without it," she said. "I don't really know how I feel about it either, but I can tell you from personal experience, it saved one life." As the room grew more somber, a man across from her said, "But now I can’t argue because of what your dad dealt with.” Everyone broke into laughter.
Sure, some positions changed over the course of this experiment, but researchers found that the swings shed the extreme positions and that “Voters at the event on both the left and the right appeared to edge toward the center.” Positions may not have changed, but reasoning was enhanced. The power of this collection of individuals was held in their ability to empathize enough to reason through the narratives of their fellow human beings. But this cannot be achieved when we do not share those stories. It certainly will not be realized when we remain insulated from opening up to know the lives of others.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks chief rabbi of England until 2013 and an English Knight, elucidates for us a beautiful passage from Talmud Berakhot concerning the power of dialogue, of engaging in one another’s narratives. He writes, “In the course of a discussion about the origin of the afternoon prayer, the Talmud refers to Isaac who “went out to meditate in the field toward evening” [an echo from the encounter between Isaac and Rebekah] and concludes that “meditate” must mean “to pray.” However, the Talmudic statement, “ein sichah ela tefillah,” can also mean “conversation is a form of prayer.” That is a startling and powerful idea. A genuine encounter with a human other can be a prelude to an encounter with the Divine Other. The disciplines required are the same: to be open, to listen as well as speak, to be capable of empathy and humility, to honor the other by an act of focused attention. Nor is this a minor matter. The greatest command of all, Shema Yisrael, literally means “Listen, O Israel.”
“Conversation is a form of prayer.” This conversation begins within ourselves. We have our story, our narrative that is our identity and how we see the world. “Taken together, psychologists' narrative research makes one resounding point: We don't just tell stories, stories tell us. They shape our thoughts and memories, and even change how we live our lives.” Yet, we must take seriously the responsibility of being the authors of our lives. This requires of us to engage in this kind of prayer...in conversation and allow ourselves to peel back the layers of our own narrative to ensure we are not only reasoning to hold fast to our stumbling high horses and remain on our shaky soapboxes, but rather to embrace the ways we can enrich our world through the narratives our fellow human beings live as well. As is sometimes attributed to the Talmud, "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
In this season of Teshuvah, of turning to discover, perhaps to re-reason, our best selves, it is incumbent upon us to not only rely on our intuitively driven judgment and decisions, but also to take that next step to search deep and unpack all that we have become. Rabbi David Hartman, an American-Israeli leader and philosopher of contemporary Judaism, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and an author, wrote: The personal significance of Yom Kippur ultimately turns on the individual’s ability to believe that his or her life can be different. The main obstacle to t’shuvah is not whether God will forgive us but whether we can forgive ourselves - whether we can believe in our own ability to change the direction of our lives, even minimally. T’shuvah is grounded in the idea of an open future, in the belief that the possibilities for human change have not been exhausted, that the final chapters of our personal narratives have not been written.
And these personal narratives are, necessarily so, deeply intertwined with those of every other human being… “to be open, to listen as well as speak, to be capable of empathy and humility, to honor the other by an act of focused attention….to Shema Yisrael, to Listen O’ Israel.”
In peeling back the layers of our own stories, and embracing that our intuition often leads, not our reason, we honor others. I don’t know how you, (NTHC: Miles, or you Libby) (TBY: Steve, or you Layla) respond when you see a bear because our stories are different. We all have our own response to the bear, and maybe at first, we all should be disgusted by green eggs and ham….but it mustn’t stop there. We MUST be better skilled, we must practice unpacking those intuitively guided decisions, those value judgements so that we may reason, or better re-reason, so that not only are we bettering our ability to be in life with others, but also owning our responsibility as authors of our narratives, the narratives we want to be our story…our life. Maybe, just maybe this will lead to more honed intuition in the first place…..
May the year 5780 be one filled with becoming authors, authors of the narratives that become our lives. And, may we be more discerning at how those stories lead our judgment, our decision making and our values, knowing that all persons have their own, and valuable, story too. In this way, we have the potential to better our world.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah - May We all Be Sealed for Good in the Coming Year
Shanah Tovah
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