GREATNESS in those little acts....
This morning two of my children were fighting. About what? I have no idea. Maybe one got a big fork and one got a little one. Maybe it was over a toy or an insistence on who has to be right or just an insistence that the other one is wrong.
No judgments, I am sure to them in that moment it felt like something big when to me, an outsider, their mother, I guarantee you that it was something momentary, an instant, a want, a thought that would be gone in the next moment. It was surely something that objectively in the scheme of things was petty and small.
I kept quiet, not wanting to interrupt or to get involved.
I tried to distract them with a song.
It didn’t work completely but it got them to calm down.
Then I said, “The bigger one is the one who asks, “Does it really matter?” And when he understands that it doesn’t can let go and can make himself small.”
They are little, but in their greatness my sons stopped fighting.
I’m big, in theory, and I have to remind myself all the time to act like it. To remind myself to ask myself before opening my mouth, “Does this…. really matter?”
I’m telling you I could have been a….brain surgeon. If I wanted to with G-d’s help, I still could. But no doubt what is harder for me is not immersing myself in a text book or solving a complicated equation.
What’s hard for me is to sit down when I want to be doing something “important” anywhere else in the world than where I am and to teach my four-year-old how to sound out a word. Or to serve a bowl of homemade meatballs and spaghetti to my family when I could be making gourmet thousand dollar meals as a top chef; to change a diaper and wipe a tear from a cranky toddler who just threw her milk on the floor. To read a story with enthusiasm about a talking frog and a dancing toad to my kids instead of being a star in a famous movie. Yes, it’s harder for me to be an empathetic, active listener to a teenager who happens to be my daughter or son as we go for a late-night walk and I’m not being paid for coaching or therapy.
And this is where this mother, this woman who could have been…makes herself so small and this is where she feels the most greatness and “accomplishment” in her life. This is where the real work is, where I really am using my talents and brains and self-control. And you know what, there isn’t anywhere in the world that I would want to be nor anything that I would want to be doing except to be me, here in my home, now. (Even though, I too, have my moments of…!!!!)
We see greatness in being quiet and just letting go when it really doesn’t matter.
We see greatness in seeing BIG in the SMALL.
There was an incredibly great sage, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who was sentenced to death by the Roman Emperor. He hid in a cave for twelve years with his son and together they learned the great secrets of the Torah. They immersed themselves in learning and very holy things. After twelve years of hiding they were told that the emperor had died and they could come out of their hiding.
They came out and were so holy and so high that couldn’t relate to a world with “little” people doing silly “little” everyday mundane things. With their fiery eyes they began to burn everything around them. A voice was heard, “Go back to the cave! You are destroying My world.”
They had to go back one more year and immerse themselves once again in the world of holiness and learning until Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was able to come out and see the greatness of little people doing little things. Like the beauty of an unlearned man carrying two myrtle twigs in honor of the holy Shabbath. He had to prove his greatness by relating to what he couldn’t relate to after being disconnected for so long.
He understood and learned the message.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai then became a great sage, a great master teacher, a great transmitter of Torah.
There is greatness in those little acts. It’s so much harder to raise up then it is to put down.
Tonight is Lag b’Omer, the night where we celebrate Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s greatness, his spirit, his holy teachings. And how do we celebrate? With our children. By singing and dancing. Tonight is the real “Mother’s Day” (or “Father’s Day”) when we should salute all those courageous acts of letting go, of saying, “It doesn’t really matter.” Of acting great by making ourselves small.
May the light of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai fill our homes and our hearts with healing, joy and song.
With blessings,
Elana