Give us this day, but no daily bread. I can't exactly say why I'm keeping kosher this Passover season, but so far, I've managed to refrain from eating any bread, not that I haven't been tempted. It's such a part of my makeup to want to grab 'the staff of life' (insert joke here). Last night at the Greek restaurant where I went for dinner with my friend Larry, the waitress put a couple of pieces of delicious looking bread in front of me, and it was all I could do to resist its leavened allure. At a certain point I said to my buddy, 'could you put this over there and get it out of my immediate sensory field' (or words to that effect), because I felt an instinctive pull to grab a hunk and stuff it in my mouth. It was almost primordial; rather than simply thinking 'I'd like a piece of bread', it was more like, 'Bread, Eat' Man want Bread!, coming from a the body, not the brain, (or so I could imagine)
But I managed to avoid it, along with the treats at the cafe where we went for coffee afterward. Actually, now that I think about it, I believe that I did have a treat a few nights ago when I might have spaced out the fact that we were still in the passover time, so it's not a case of me being all kind of 'purist' about the holiday. But there is certainly something to be said for depriving oneself of what one thinks one wants and seeing what happens as a result.
I'm reminded of my Rabbi friend Jeff Marx's thought process when I asked him for a consult about a story I was working on. I was trying to write a piece about bullying, but I was having trouble coming up with the right tone for the story. Should I concentrate on the bully himself, or the victim or the classroom as a whole? I presented the dilemma to Jeff, and his first thought was, 'What is the opposite of bullying?' He followed up immediately with the phrase, 'Use your power for good', and that struck me as the perfect approach. And I was intrigued by the way he had arrived at this solution. He made a conscious choice to consider the opposite, and because of that decision, he immediately hit upon a great idea. I heard the words 'Use your power for good' as a melody and an anthem. The hook of the song was written in a flash. I didn't write it, actually, it just 'was'.
It makes me wonder if that act of considering 'what is the opposite' might have some utility in other areas of my life. I think I know my ruts pretty well by this point, those pathways which seem to direct my thoughts around the same mental route. I'm going to place a thought in my brain which says, 'when you find yourself aware that you're going down that familiar pathway, stop to consider 'what is the opposite''. Especially when I get daunted by the familiar 'there is too much to do' paralysis about career building tasks, website maintenance, album recording, social media outreach, business building, mailing list creation, promotional work, equipment upgrading etc etc etc, it would be wise to consider 'what is the opposite of this feeling of helplessness?' I do believe that there is some solution lurking there.
Speaking of the word 'daunted', which I mentioned in the last paragraph. I was having a very interesting conversation with a new friend, Rico, in which I mentioned that word. I had just met him, a fifty something, charismatic Argentinian guy who has recently made Eugene his home. He's a very bright individual, makes his living as a translator, bilingual marketing guy. He's very plugged into the new forms of social networking, is posting stuff all the time, making connections, drawing people to him, and he's definitely got the knack for the new media. I could tell by the way he instinctively took some pictures and brief video at the blues jam and then posted it to his facebook, as a matter of course.
We got talking during the break and I had an immediate sense that he had a lot of what I need, so I was interested in having a conversation. At one point, I mentioned that I am daunted by the amount of stuff that I need to do in the social networking arena which I don't know how to do. Then I stopped and asked him if he understood the word 'daunted'. The reason I asked him is because his accent is fairly strong, and I wasn't sure of the level of his English comprehension. He assured me that he knew what it meant, telling me that he's been in the states for 30 years, works as a translator etc. I ribbed him a little, saying that if he's so great in English, why does he have such a strong accent?
This made him laugh, and his answer was that the times he was going to try and lose the accent, he would have a girlfriend who would say, 'But I love your accent'. (sounded like a convenient excuse, but who am I to judge?). Then he continued and said that when he gives a talk, he will invariably start out like this: 'I apologize for my accent, but if there is something you don't understand, please raise your hand.... AND I'LL SAY IT LOUDER!. It was a 'laugh line', and my first reaction was to say, 'What are you, Jewish?' It just seemed like such a Jewish take, to use a little comedy shtick as a way of dealing with a little quirk like an accent. He says, 'Yes, I am, nobody ever guesses this, you are the first'. We both laughed a lot about it, and I think it's very amusing to sniff out a Jewish approach to life and comedy, even if it has a Spanish accent. Takes one to know one, I guess.
