It’s a Feature, not a Bug

“I was with my therapist telling her how stressed out I am about my parenting. How I suck. And she asked me “LM, do you follow a bunch of Instagram parenting accounts?” A light bulb went off then….” -- IG conversation with a friend 

It’s official we are all a mess. 

We are the most technologically hooked up generation, yet social media is abuzz with empathy for how lonely we feel. We connect via Instagram, yet feel disconnected from our core self. 

TikToks and Reels seduce us with messaging that we are broken and need healing. 

We need to reparent ourselves, make self care our top priority, and lose the guilt. “I am a rock, I am an island.” But in this generation, I feel all my pain, my emotions are my driver, and healing is my spiritual pursuit. And boundaries. Boundaries so high and thick, we are imprisoning ourselves in a fortress in the name of self preservation. 

(Full disclosure as a GenX'er, irony feeds me) 

Here is something I have learned. Despite how we may feel on the outside or what anyone tells us - we are connected. We are intrinsically and inescapably connected to the ones that matter; ourselves, our parents, our children and God. 

If we feel disconnected, it's not because we are a mess, but because the world is (by design) upside down. It's because disconnection- is a feature, not a bug. 

We are not broken, we just need to understand how to move through our experience of brokenness. And yes, paradoxically, we need to experience disunity to be part of Ein Sof, God’s limitlessness. 

Huh? How so? You ask? 

Let me explain. 

Rosh Hashana celebrates the birthday of the world. Happy 5783 years old, world! 

Our mystics teach that when God created the world, he did so through words. As it states in the ethics of our Fathers, “...with ten utterances the world was created.” 

Not one, but ten well chosen ones. 

In that same vein, God has many names, and each name is intentionally used, almost like a mnemonic for the energy put forth with that name. 

For the first thirty verses of the Torah, where creation is recounted - God is called Elo-him. The name that gets conjugated: my God, your God, her God, their God. It is always the SAME God, but metaphorically, the changes in conjugation represent diversity. As the name morphs, it represents the God who creates discernment, differences and individuality. 

Only later are we introduced to the name of God fixed; Yud/Hey/Vov/Hey, or Ado-nai. It is the name of Hashem Echad, the name that speaks of oneness, singularity, sameness, ein sof - no beginning or end. 

Yet at the closing of the Yom Kippur service, we will chant seven times, 

Hashem (Yud/Hey/Vav/Hey) Hu Ha-Elokim. Hashem is Elokim. 

The God of oneness is the God of diversity. Meaning, the oneness and diversity are all the same. It is all Hashem Echad, it all emanates from and is united within the One God. 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that the world we live in is DIVERSE. That we are all disconnected at the surface and have to work together and work hard to create noticeable connections and unification among ourselves.

It perhaps takes a scientific bend to give a harder look. When you observe the animal kingdom, there is a synergy that is not readily apparent, but even a child can intuit that it exists. Dig a little deeper, say into the mud beneath your feet. There you find a whole other story, trees, flowers, worms, fungi, bacteria, all communicating. They co-operate instinctively and naturally, in the ocean it is the same. As you zoom in further to a molecular level, you are left with the atom as the building block of all creation. 

In a few weeks, we will read the Torah portion that discusses the building of the Tower of Babel. From the beginning, early in our history, the humans wanted to whitewash diversity and superficially unite everyone, one language, one dress code, one way of life. In TikTok parlance, you could say they wanted to “skip to the good part…” 

They didn't recognize that the duality of extrinsic diversity that overlays intrinsic unity is the intended system of creation. We come into the world as a perfect soul, we are meant to experience struggle, disconnection and otherness as a way back to our intrinsic wholeness - that through this process we embody on a much more profound level. 

God took thirty verses to engrain this idea into the fabric of creation, because it's a big deal, yet it's not the only story. 

It is not by accident that defiance is the principal task of adolescence (bleeding into early adult years lately). Because a child needs to connect to their own oneness (which comes from their intrinsic connection to their parent and God who created them), so they have to disconnect on the surface. 

When a child is disrespectful, talks back, is fresh, or to put it plainly filled with chutzpah, our broken way of thinking is that this child needs to be taught values and made to speak respectfully. 

Actually, when a child is disrespectful, it is because they are so tightly connected to their parent or loving adult, and like water for a parched mouth, is healthy disconnection for their soul.

 Their freshness is their instinctive way of telling you, “Mom and Dad, I am not you!” “This connection thing is so strong, I need my space.”

If we don’t know this, we freak out, and subconsciously respond with “Oh no! My child is disconnecting, so let me force them back to my orbit”. “You may not speak with me that way!” instead of listening to what they are trying to say. 

If we understand that disconnection comes from being intrinsically connected, while also needing to be extrinsically disconnected, we don’t freak out. 

Don’t freak out! 

Families want their children to reflect the inner truth on the outside; vote the same way, attend the same alma matters, go into similar professions. We want to project our intrinsic unity at the outer layer, but this is where we are getting it wrong, and that is why we feel like a mess. I cringe when I think about how I matchy-matched all my children's clothing. This is just a small expression of my disordered thinking about this matter. What I have learned is that not accepting their differences from me is a much bigger problem. 

Follow the logic; intrinsically connected, extrinsically independent. Or as I have heard it explained, our ideal station is: Safe, connected and free all at the same time.

Give love freely! 

We are all connected, it’s the disconnect that we need to learn to manage. It is accepting that our best self shows up as ourselves, and that means disconnecting from our parents, it means boundaries, it also means showing up Jewishly in the way that we know is not all or nothing.

In the greatest act of love, God created the world with free choice to actualize our disconnection from Him or align with our intrinsic connection. On Rosh Hashana, when we stand together and listen to the shofar, we are choosing to look deeper and acknowledge that diversity illuminates an internal oneness that can never be broken. 

(Based on Rabbi YY Jacobson’s class on the Rebbe Rashab’s Ma’amer Heichaltzu)

Photo Credit: Zalmy B.