On Suffering: A Blessing for the Month of Elul

Author

Ari Hoffman, MA, LPC is a decent guy who, when feeling stressed, likes to paint with watercolor and maybe also gouache, depending on how brave he’s feeling. Ari is a couples and family therapist, wilderness guide, and entrepreneur. Ari maintains an active therapy practice in a town about 30 minutes from Jerusalem where he lives with his wife and four children. You can find Ari on one of his many websites including www.arihoffmantherapy.com.

On Suffering:  A Blessing for Elul 5784

Last week I was sitting on the patio of a restaurant outside of Jerusalem with a close friend as he told me a story about one of his backpacking trips with my father in the Rocky Mountains.  The two of them were hiking close to evening and were still a good distance from where they planned to set up camp and sleep. The trail was a consistent uphill grade and the physical exertion was proving challenging for my friend. He told my father that he needed a rest and my father, a veteran of Outward Bound and an experienced wilderness and psychodrama therapist, refused.  He explained that they needed to keep going because of the coming darkness. 

Finally, my friend couldn’t take it anymore and he called out to my father that he absolutely had to stop and rest.  My father turned to him in the quiet of the alpine evening and told him, “rest while you walk”.
“Rest while I walk? What does that even mean?”
“Rest while you walk. Change the cadence of your gait and your breathing so that you are walking slower and taking a breath between footsteps.”
My friend was at first skeptical but as he tried this he felt like he was getting some of the rest his body needed to continue the trek up the mountain.  What my father told my friend to do on that evening hike is called the Mountain Rest Step, or The Mountain Step and it is designed to give your body some rest as you continue to move in your intended direction.

Benefits of the Mountain Step

For me the Mountain Rest Step does a couple things.  First, like my friend, I have found that it affords me some physical relief while on a long or difficult hike. It also does something that I find to be of even greater value than the physical relief - it distracts me from the goal.  When I am focused only on my goal some natural attending emotions can include: frustration that I’m not yet at the goal; hope that I achieve the goal soon; despair when the goal turns out to be a lot farther away than I thought; shame when I think that there may be something wrong with me that has resulted in me being so far from my goal; anger at myself, my parents, G-d, or The Man, for causing to me to be so far from my goal.

When I’m walking with the Mountain Rest Step my psychic reach shrinks from focusing on the goal and it turns toward my present moment reality. I’m now focusing on my breathing and how I move my body. Instead of my goal being the only thing with value, each step has its own inherent value and the goal is simply another step, no better and no worse.

There is another ingredient in this formula: Radical Acceptance. There’s a lot of literature about radical acceptance.  Toward the end of a trip to Colorado this summer I climbed a 13er with my daughter and a good friend. It was challenging. Since making aliyah my lungs have gotten used to a higher oxygen saturation than the Mile High City and, truth be told, I am a bit out of shape. Throughout the hike I noticed some significant physical discomfort – my feet, my legs, my breathing, my chest, and my shoulders weighed down by a backpack, to name a few. 

The Value of Pain

I’m not going to be pollyannish and suggest that all pain is good and should be
embraced. Pain sucks, lets be real. However, there is one thought I’ll offer you.
In my work as a couples and family therapist there is a word that triggers my alarm
bells consistently. ‘Should’. Also, ‘Supposed To’.  A friend once said, “don’t should on yourself”. I think that’s great advice.

If I assign a value to my pain, my struggle, or my discomfort as right or wrong, or as should be or shouldn’t be then what I’m doing is sending my body a message that something is wrong with the fact that I’m in pain, struggling, or uncomfortable. When something is wrong the doors open wide for the messages and emotions listed before that come up when I am focused only on the goal.

An alternative message to the assignation of value could be something like the following: This pain is what I’m experiencing and it is an integral part of what my life is right now. I don’t have to like it but I accept it as my current experience.

For me on the 13er it went something like this: “This pain is normal. This pain is not damaging me. This pain is part of the choice I made to climb this mountain and spend quality time with people who are important to me. This pain is contributing to me being a healthier human.” Of course this message doesn’t work for all people or for all situations but it’s an example.

Final Blessing

One of the hardest parts of coming into the high holiday season and teshuva can be this sense of suffering.  It can feel like suffering to spend long days facing my inner world of “not there yet,” wishing I was better, going through the same yearly struggle of climbing the mountain to my better self.  If we continue to focus on the goal, on the peak, on achieving the perfected image of ourselves, we may feel like we have to give up halfway, we’ll never get there.
As we you enter the Days of Return ahead, I bless you to remember the Mountain Rest Step, to enjoy the breath of growth along the way, and to learn to suffer well (and not too much).

Shana Tova!

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