Month: March 2020

The alarm goes off. Roll out of bed, get through your morning routine as quickly as possible so you can move on to the tasks of the day or rush off to work. Every moment of your day seems to demand your attention until you climb back into bed in the evening exhausted. It doesn’t take long before even tasks and work you love becomes oppressive.

Let’s try that differently. Imagine that the first thing you do as you wake in the morning before you even get out of bed is to recite a blessing:

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ מֶֽלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּים. שֶׁהֶֽחֱזַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי ,בְּחֶמְלָה. רַבָּה אֱמֽוּנָתֶֽךָ

I give thanks before you, King living and eternal, for You have returned within me my soul with compassion; abundant is Your faithfulness!

This blessing points to two important thoughts:

• My life itself is the result of compassionate action.
• Human beings are worthy.

This blessing calls our attention to the compassion that surrounds us and to our meaning and value in the world. It isn’t about blessing God — it is about us, reminding us that we are cared for and valued. What better way to enter a day than with a reminder of the meaningfulness of what we do in it?

I once heard that depression is anger directed inward. This is undoubtedly an over-simplication of the relationship between depression and anger, but it’s clear that there is a correlation between these emotional states. Some scientists say that anger and irritability may be expressions of depression for some.

This morning I’m thinking about how a practice of reciting blessings might interrupt that cycle and create a different outlook. If that works, it might be because anger and depression are symptoms of a disruption in the relationship between self and other.

I believe that humans, like nonhuman animals, have an evolutionary drive toward cooperation and compassion — as well as a drive toward competition and caution, or even suspicion, toward the other. Both these drives serve our evolutionary success in different ways.

Perhaps when these drives become imbalanced, a result is that we diminish ourselves and our own needs — or become overly aggressive and combative towards the world. Of course these expressions may be intermingled since we’re never all one thing or another. The main idea is the imbalance that expresses itself in a variety of ways until a person can again find balance.

I wonder if those who are most comfortable in their lives, most “successful” at living, might be those who have found the key to this balance. Some find it very naturally — others with greater difficulty. For some of us, it’s the work of a lifetime, tinkering here and there on a daily basis, occasionally requiring a major overhaul.

Another thing I once heard is that everyone needs a spiritual practice. Isn’t that what 100 blessings a day is? A spiritual practice directed toward teaching us to pay attention, notice.

Yuval Noah Harari points out that hunter-gatherers were much more attuned to their environment and the creatures in it than we. They had to be. And I would guess that close connection to externals helped maintain a more balanced evaluation of self in relation to the environment and other beings. Finally, and this is just a guess, I bet hunter-gatherers were not as subject to depression and irritability.

Blessings are a tool available to us to reesablish our intimate connection with the world around us and become more realistic in our evaluations of ourselves in relation to it. In this way, blessings keep us healthy.

Imagine if you were to find 100 reasons to recite a blessing every day of your life. How might it transform your outlook and your world?

There is a Jewish tradition that requires we recite at least 100 blessings a day. For an Orthodox Jew who prays three times a day, this is fairly easy to accomplish. But the practice has life-changing benefits for all of us, no matter what our religious or spiritual practice, if we have no spiritual practice, or if we are secular. It’s about cultivating full awareness, a sense of loving and being loved, of gratitude and awe.

Blessings are everywhere, although we tend to overlook those opportunities. We are busy with our lives, or we are overwhelmed with the difficulty of our days. Life can seem random, full of disappointment and loss, even ugly and brutal. How do we know love in the midst of that?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “It is well known that the Chinese ideogram for ‘crisis’ also means ‘opportunity.’ Any civilisation that can see the blessing within the curse, the fragment of light within the heart of darkness, has within it the capacity to endure.” Jacob wrestles with the angel, is permanently damaged but refuses to leave without a blessing, forcing the angel to see and acknowledge him in his pain.

100 blessings is about cultivating the awareness that is the foundation of radical love and joy.