Real life can be stressful. There’s nothing perfect about this world, nor is there meant to be objective and enduring perfection here. In your stay on the planet, you are like an artist facing an easel and looking at your paints. You are not like an artist who can step back and see the finished piece of art. Imperfection touches everything-your body, your emotional life (friendships, marriage, your relationship with yourself), intellectual pursuit (only if its real) thrives on imperfection – the as yet unsolved puzzle, whether it is a difficult torah concept, or a deep philosophical issue such as suffering, or trying to unlock nature’s secrets and finding out that she holds on to them tenaciously. Unlike physical and emotional imperfection, intellectual challenge can take you to places of breathtaking beauty, but only on one condition.
You have to be humble enough to say (to yourself or to others) that there is still more to learn. Spiritual imperfection is the stuff that guilt and self-hatred can be made of, or, alternatively growth, aspiration and tshuvah.
People deal with life’s stresses in all sorts of ways. Do you know someone who is addicted to opioids, drinking-maybe not? Do you know someone with eating issues and/or media addicting? Maybe yes. Maybe it’s the person you see when you look in the mirror.
What all of these solutions to the problem of stress have in common is that they suggest that on some level you prefer the perfection of dreams to the imperfection of reality.
My dear friend, Sarah Berkovitz shared an insight she had about The first dream recorded in the Torah.
It was Yaakov’s dream. He was literally escaping from an unbearable reality. His brother Eisov was plotting to murder him, and he had no choice but to leave everything familiar (imagine leaving the inspiration of being with Yitzchak and Rivka on a daily basis) and on the way to his uncle Lavan’s home (a nightmare in itself), he had a dream. He saw the spiritual forces of Eretz Yisrael ascending, and the angels of the world outside the spiritual hothouse of Eretz Yisrael coming down.
The dream has many interpretations given by Chazal, but regardless of which one you look at, they have one thing in common.
The angels walked step by step.
The bottom of the ladder is here,
in the world of imperfection.
The top is in the (as yet) invisible world
of unity and perfection.
The only way you can get up the ladder
is by taking one step at a time.
The way down can be painful.
The angels of challenge, despair,
Exile descends with awesome consistency.
Meiron
Covid
Karlin
War
And all of the familiar stresses and challenges.
You can meet them one at a time
There is a guidebook with instructions
that takes you to the top of the ladder
They move you to the perfect place of unity
They are part of this world’s reality
And more
Assur mans forbidden,
but it also means tied down.
Whatever the Torah deems as assur
is the source of imperfection,
and its purpose
is for you to look it in the eye,
and say NO.
There are things that are muttar, which means permitted
It also means untied, free
For you to use as your springboard to eternity.
Enjoy your life here in Imperfection Land
When Moshiach comes, we will say;
A song of ascents
When Hashem takes Tzion out of captivity, we were like people
In a dream.
Let our captivity, Hashem
Be like dried out streams in the Negev
Those who plant with tears
Shall reap
With joy
