A word of Torah:
        In our two preceding teachings for Elul, we learned we should be careful to listen to those inner voices that can exaggerate our failures. “You didn’t just mess up this relationship, you mess up every relationship!” Instead, we should accept the truth about ourselves--both our strengths and our flaws. We understand that just feeling badly and hopeless will leave us stuck in neutral.
        If holiness is found in everything, where is the holiness when you make a mistake or, even worse, hurt someone’s feelings? It is in the moment when you realize you made a mistake that allows for a change. As long as you justify or ignore what you have done, you can’t begin the process of teshuva. It is similar to meditation, where only when you realize your mind is wandering do you have the opportunity to regain your focus.
        Acknowledging that truth means admitting that we really want to change this aspect of who we are. It is that process that can lead to transformation. Hasidism talked about love of God as the basic impulse in the world. I would suggest being a caring person connected to other human beings is the vision shared by all human beings. We want to be that kind of person, but it is scary to change the way we have been for so long. One barrier is thinking that we must radically change for it to be meaningful. We seek an impossible goal of perfection. Thomas Moore (a contemporary theologian) talks about care of the soul, not cure of the soul. We can’t cure all that is wrong, but we can do better.
        Aren’t most of the stories we tell ourselves distortions of the truth? In my case I was often exaggerating the bleakness of my situation, ignoring any evidence to the contrary. Whether it was self-pitying or self-aggrandizing, the distortion was a mechanism for not facing the truth. Either the situation was hopeless or it was close to perfect—in either case there was nothing for me to do. Instead I could realistically assess the situation, acknowledge my part in creating it and then attempt to do better.
        It doesn’t have to be love of God that enables us to stop treating a person as an object and start forming a real mutual emotional connection with that person. After all, wouldn’t we prefer a deep relationship with someone for whom we care and who returns that love? Our search for a connection in love or friendship is a universal desire. As God says in Genesis: It is not good for a person to be alone. Shouldn’t we devote our energy to creating and maintaining those relationships? The real Torah of our lives is written in the ways we relate to the other images of God we encounter every day.