Two Roads to Living

One day in the hospital, two little boys were lying on stretchers next to each other outside of the operating room.
The first boy leans over and asks, "What are you in for?"
"I'm here to get my tonsils out and I'm nervous," the second boy says.
The first kid says, "You've got nothing to worry about! I had that done when I was four. They put you to sleep and when you wake up they give you lots of ice cream and Jell-O. It's a breeze!"
"Well what are you here for?" the second kid asks.
"A circumcision."
The second boy says "Whoa! I had that done when I was born and I couldn't walk for a year!"

And speaking as I am of tradition and faith, this morning in our Torah portion we read of the great saga of two great men. These two men, born into a home of great prosperity – of riches, servants, comforts and safety – these two men were also born into a home of great promise. Their father Isaac, the son of Abraham, held in his hand the key to an eternal blessing from G-d. That G-d’s special blessing when given to a person would give them not merely power in this time, but power for all time.

That their name and fame would not merely exist in their time, but would carry forth through all time.
The obvious question is who in the family would you give the blessing to? Isaac’s answer was to leave it in G-d’s hand, and left it so the first born son would get it.

Because this is a great story, fate weaves that of course twin boys are born, and so the one to emerge first was given the blessing.

The boys grow – the first born Esau is loved by his father and is a man of the field, a hunter, a man of lust and passion. Rabbinic tradition sees Esau as the prototype of a person who lives in this world, and thinks of nothing beyond what can be seen, touched, and tasted. The second boy Jacob is favoured by his mom Rachel, and is quiet, studious, and sensitive. The rabbis saw in him the model of a man who lives here, but reaches for up there.
The mother, Rachel, feared that the boy she loved would not get the blessing that she felt he deserved, and she plots an elaborate plan to get what she feels is his.

The story unfolds in the way you probably already know….Rachel helps Jacob to get the blessing, which he gets, and when his brother Esau discovers that he lost out he runs to Isaac.
When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said unto his father: 'Bless me too my father!'

Esau is hysterical, but it is too late. That blessing is gone, and is never to return, and Isaac in turn gives him a lesser blessing.

This blessing is not the kind that promises eternity, it doesn’t offer heaven, but only this world. He blesses him with land, and cattle, and prosperity and riches. Esau’s kingdom would be only of this world.

Which is not unlike the kind of kingdom we’ve built around ourselves these days, isn’t it?

So let’s say that someone would come to you with an offer: I will give you a house, a car, appliances, and a vacation if you promise to pay me back.

And pay me back with interest.

Not a bad deal, you might think. You get what you want now minus the need to save up for it, the other person has saved money that’s sitting around and needs to do something with it – it sounds like a match made in heaven.
It all makes sense….

Except the devil, as usual, is in the details.

What if the money that’s being lent is money that was borrowed from someone else, who has also borrowed from someone else?

What if the person borrowing the money doesn’t have the ability to pay back the money? And what if the house, car and appliances you are borrowing for aren’t worth what you’ve paid for them?

Sounds crazy, you might say?

Well, welcome to our new world.

The remarkable thing to it all is that even as of 6 months ago you had bankers, brokers, investors, and homeowners looking at wealth that amazed them. 6 months ago executives were pulling down multi million dollar bonuses, car makers were making cars that while consuming 15 miles to the gallon were cars that no one needed to really buy, people buying properties on the idea that it would – of course! – increase 10, 20, 30 percent before the year was up. Why would it increase? Because it was supposed to, that’s why. People were buying homes, and having not even lived in them would turn them around to sell them.

The great existential philosopher Soren Kierkergaard once wrote that life is lived forwards, but only understood looking backwards.

So standing where we are now - seeing over 10 trillion US dollars in wealth evaporate seemingly overnight – standing where we are now we have to wonder how did we get here?
 
What was the fuel that drove all this?

Some would call it the dream - the great dream of unlimited happiness. The dream of great prosperity for the greatest numbers. The dream that says the more we have the happier we will be. It is the dream that says that life’s problems can be solved by what we see on the outside. It is the dream that by covering ourselves in layers of labels, fabrics and homes and cars we fill ourselves to happiness. It is the dream that by making other see us as complete, that we will be what others see us as.

And of course, it is not true. It never is, and will never be.
When we look at life in this way we find 2 ways to live life.
One way to live is to have, the other way is to be.
 
The way of having is the easiest solution to life. The answer of having says that things can fix us – if you’re lonely, have sex. If you’re feeling down, buy a coat. If your self-worth is low, work harder and become successful.
The great crisis of having is that you can never have enough – we soon discover that we are bottomless pits. We discover that we are more than just things that need things. The way of having is the easiest way, provided that you are able to get the things you want to have. If you’re not – you are then left in the very worst of circumstances, of being on the outside looking in – you need the things you want to have, but can’t get them.

You are then forced to look inside yourself, but what little is there isn’t enough.

The other way is to be. It is to recognize that we are not what we have, or make, but what we are. It is the task of looking inside ourselves, and realizing that there is nothing in life that can fill our needs as well as we can.
Having is consuming, but being is living.

There is a story that best explains this.
Some students of the great Hasidic rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov came to him one day with a question. "Every year we travel here to learn from you. Nothing would ever make us stop doing that. But we have learned of a man in our own town who claims to be a tzaddik, a righteous one. If he is genuine, we would love to profit from his wisdom. But how will we know if he is a fake?"
The Baal Shem Tov looked at his earnest students. "You must test him by asking him a question."
He paused.
"Do you have had difficulty with stray thoughts during prayer?"
"Yes!" The students answered honestly. "We do our best to think only of holy and pure intentions when we pray, but other thoughts always seem come into our minds. We have tried many methods to stop this, but none of them have worked yet."
"Good," said the rabbi. "Ask him the way to stop such thoughts from entering your minds."
The rabbi then paused and smiled.
"And if he has an answer, he is a fake."

In the end, life is best lived from the inside out. That the outside is filled with lies, confusion, and fakery
And as for our two brothers from this morning’s reading it is often wondered why this man of the field, this man of blood and lust, why would this man care so very much for a blessing? A thing of words and thought alone. And the answer may be that Esau for all his wandering, for all of his lust and power it may be that he came to realize what we now need to realize: he realized that he had a soul, and he too needed it to be blessed. That life was about being some thing, and not simply having things.
 
Shabbat Shalom