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Living a Life of Balance
I’d like to share a true story that happened just a couple years ago. Imagine you are a commuter in Washington, DC. It is a few minutes before 8 a.m. on a cold Friday morning in January. As you rush through L’Enfant Plaza’s Metro Station, you see a non-descript guy in jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a Washington National’s baseball cap playing classical violin. The acoustics in the station are kind to the masterpieces rolling off the strings. Pieces like “Chaconne” from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita.” A piece by Jules Massnet; a Bach gavotte. You are one of the 1,097 people who walk by in the next 43 minutes. Leonard Slatkin, the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra was asked, hypothetically, what he thought would occur if one of the world’s great violinists was performing incognito under such condition. He felt reasonably confident that a crowd would gather and the ersatz street performer would garner $150.00. The reality turned out to be quite different. Seven people—not even a minyan—stopped for at least a minute. Twenty seven gave the violinist some money, most of them on the run. That means 1,070 people hurried by, oblivious to the beauty of the music and the mastery of the musician. Exactly one person stopped, because she recognized him, having seen him perform at the Library of Congress earlier that week. The musician was Joshua Bell. The violin was his Stradivarius. The entire episode was staged by The Washington Post. And the average, working American passed by a man who has played before the crown heads of Europe, who three days before had filled Boston’s Symphony Hall where the low-end decent seats went for $100 each. Bell’s performance fees can average about $1000 a minute. Out of a given context, he was just another street musician whose 43 minutes of virtuoso performance netted him $32.17. Yes, you heard me correctly: and 17 cents. People literally gave him pennies. Two days after this article in The Washington Post appeared, Bell returned from another tour of European capitals to accept the Avery Fisher Prize as the best classical musician in America.
The Hopi people have a word I wish to share with you. It is “koyaanisqatsi.” It means life out of balance. It’s what leads us to the loss of appreciation for beauty in the modern world because it is irrelevant to us. It is about having the wrong priorities. If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that—then what else are we missing? Not only have we become inured to the beauty and wonder in the world; worse yet, we live in an age where being out of balance seems to be society’s norm, in which greed and excess apparently have become standard and accepted practices. It seems that we spend so much energy trying to live the good life that we don’t even remember what it means to live a life that is good.
Here’s another true story. The Bon people are the indigenous natives of Tibet. They have oral traditions that record their history dating back 18,000 years. The Buddhists are relative latecomers to Tibet; they persecuted the Bon people mercilessly when they invaded and conquered the region. In the last few decades there has been a rapprochement between the Bon and the Buddhists of Tibet. An accord for both ethnicities has been struck in the face of shared attacks against their traditions and the exile of their leaders by the Communist Chinese government. The Dalai Lama is universally recognized as the political head of all the Tibetan people in exile. In turn, when asked about traditional Tibetan culture, the Dalai Lama refers people to the Abbot of the Bon people as the authentic voice of ancient Tibet. I had the opportunity for a small, private audience his His Holiness the Abbot in November, 2007 at the home of friends in the Berkshires. My friend Jon is a young retiree who volunteers a month every year providing medical care at the Abbot’s monastery in north-western India. I was thrilled for the invitation to spend time with the Abbott. Much of what His Holiness taught was familiar to me due to its similarity to Buddhist teaching: attachment leads to disappointment; life’s goals are joy and happiness. At the end of the audience after the other two guests had left, I asked the Abbbot the following question: aren’t joy and happiness also illusory and transitory? After all, what makes one happy or joyous one day might fail to do so the next. Wouldn’t it be more profound to focus instead on goodness? I suggested that one’s quality of goodness doesn’t change so quickly, and it might even be the case that focusing on goodness will more likely lead to the attainment of happiness and joy than focusing on happiness and joy would. It was clear that the Abbot had never considered this question before. His face at first looked puzzled, and then contemplative as I could all but hear his deep mind consider the question. He finally responded with a simple affirmation and said “Yes, goodness is a more essential and profound quality than even happiness and joy.”
It seems to me that a concentrated focus on goodness might be the perfect antidote to the greed that has so permeated so much of American life. If the scorecard of the secular marketplace has led us to some perverse sense that “the one with the most toys wins—no matter who else gets hurt,” or even worse, the idea of “do unto others, then split before you get caught” then perhaps the antidote is the value of a life in balance, as informed by a commitment to living holy lives. If we take our Jewish values seriously, if we accept that there is indeed something grander than our own needs—something more compelling than our financial portfolios, something more fulfilling than the acquisition of mere stuff—then perhaps we can be better people for the effort.
I recognize that living active Jewish lives is not a magical insurance policy that will preclude troubles and tragedy from entering our lives; hard challenges will still come. It is not a spiritual calculus that determines who is the better person relative to the next by adding and comparing “mitzvah points.” It is not the performance of pious deeds in order to effect some metaphysical, cosmic change or a promotion at work or picking the winning lottery numbers. It is the deeper way to create opportunities to appreciate the wonder and beauty in the world around us. Living our Jewish values provides us the encouragement to create meaning in the midst of chaos when challenges do affect our lives. The value of living a spiritual Jewish life is the ability to access a vital part of something larger than ourselves, a transcendent reality that exists beyond time and space. It is the possibility of realizing more mindfully the incredible gift that life is and the beauty it offers us on a daily basis. The value of Jewish living is to know and affirm that we really do matter, our lives count, our presence on this earth counts and that we have the ability to make a difference in ways large and small. The value of Jewish tradition is to put goodness front and center as our goal in life, and increases the possibility that we will experience joy, happiness, and contentment along the way. Ultimately, the value of religious living is that it helps us keep our lives in balance.
These compelling values are worth being reminded to ourselves every day. God has made all of us in the Divine Image. The ultimate Artist of Creation daily renews creation and gives each of us a chance to renew ourselves at the same time. Every day we face the possibilities offered by redemption from that which enslaves us. Every day we can recognize the gift of the partnership God offers us to help make a difference in the world through some act of hesed, through some act of interpersonal kindness and connection. And every day we can stand up before God and simply say “Thank you” for all the blessings in our lives, and thereby not be inured to the beauty and possibilities that exist in the world, that we not take for granted the sublime sense of joy that comes from experiencing that beauty. When we embrace Judaism’s timeless responses to the reality of the human condition, we further our ability to live lives filled with a deeper sense of meaning, a deeper sense of purpose, and a deeper sense of fulfillment.
We need to know that our lives can be in balance, and remind ourselves of the values that we want to guide our lives. For me, this is what the High Holy Days is really about. It is about our affirmations that we can access the better parts of ourselves, no matter how we might have failed to do so up to now. It is about knowing that new beginnings do occur, and each new day offers us a new start on life. It is about realizing that we are not insignificant creatures but rather that we are God’s own partners in making the world a better place, and that further, when we try to accomplish that noble and Divine goal, we make ourselves into better people. It’s about knowing that despite the commercials it is not the stuff we have that counts in our lives, but rather the things we do that really matters the most. The High Holy Days come to remind us that it is never too late to begin anew; it is never too late to turn ourselves around and reclaim the better life-path; it is never too late to dedicate ourselves to lives marked with goodness and imbued with balance. It can all start today, right now. It doesn’t require Divine Intervention. It just requires our willingness to look within ourselves and examine our priorities. We can be like the people who hurried past Joshua Bell playing grand classics on his Stradivarius violin and not be bad people for having done so. But don’t we want to be more than that? Wouldn’t we rather live the blessing of goodness and a life that is in balance? The choice is up to us. These holy days remind us that the possibility for self-renewal is real, that each day is another chance for that renewal, despite what we might have done yesterday.
I wish all of us a meaningful fast this Yom Kippur. May we be sealed for a year marked by a greater sense of balance, an increased commitment to a life focused on goodness, and the blessings of goodness, sweetness, health, and peace.
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