I posted this on a duo-ethnic group and have yet to get a response. Wanted to putthis out to my friends and family. Im formulating a thought (and a learning/teaching opportunity for my 3 yo son) and it goes like this: Everytime he tells me Ima, Im sad/angry/hurt, I started telling him something like: Your feelings are valid, your feelings have power. You can choose to do either good or bad with them. What do you choose?. (Application: Tani, Im sorry youre sad (bc you didnt get enough Cheerios). Your feelings have power and you can decide to use them for good (ask nicely for more) or for bad (throw it all on the floor and let loose all hell). ) This came about bc Ive been trying to humanize the terrorist attacks in Israel. I got so taken aback that people were offended that we call murderers terrorists, yadda yadda blabla, that it made me think - is there really any such thing as evil if everyones feelings are valid? And really what motivates us in life? Our feelings (feelings that aggregate based on treatment from our loved ones, based on our childhood, our past experiences, based on our accumulated exposures to the world). Like a well-adjusted, loved child vs a child who was repeatedly raped by his father. A teenager whose parents accept him for whoe he is vs a gay teen who is ostracized by his own family. Etc etc. Our feelings propel us to succeed, our feelings also prevent us from succeeding, theyll make us great, or make us cower, make us pursue justice, make us extract revenge, and so on. So Im still working on that train of thought, feel free to jump in and revise but thats where that ends. But the main idea was like this: part of my Jewish supremacist thing comes from seeing our responses to the pain we suffer both as a nation and individually: we get bombed, we build bomb shelters; we get gassed - we build museums; we get terrorized - we sue; we get hurt by people we love - we go to therapy; we lose a loved one to cancer (Gd forbid) - we start Ezer Mitizion; failed school - tours Europe; lost a job - starts a start-up; feels wronged - learns to forgive; traumatized - finds Gd. This is how I see the Jewish people since time immemorial. Theres even a concept like this in the Torah for someone who is bloodthirsty, he should become a butcher. Then I go and watch something like The Blacklist or really just look to the news, and I see people who feel they were wronged: kids father lost his job and committed suicide - kid became a terrorist; teen feeling opressed - terrorism; no job - terrorism; lost his family in a fire - mass murderer.... I know Im biased, I get that. And Im working on fixing that or at least adjusting it in proportion to reality. And so I ask of you: How do you see this premise applied to the P/I conflict or to Jews in general: Your feelings are valid, your feelings have power. You can choose to do either good or bad with them. What do you choose?
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 08:58:03 +0000
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