But That’s OK!: The Spiritual Practice of Letting Life Be Easy

“Yeah, but that’s ok! Don’t worry, Ima!”

My oldest daughter Sybil is quite sassy. She’ll be five on Yom Kippur this year and I swear, yes swear, she’s already 22 going on 35. They say toddlers are “threenagers.” Well somehow I ended up with a 20-year-old who still wears a diaper at night. (Only at night — and even that we are praying will soon come to an end.)

Sybil is, of course, one of my greatest teachers — when I allow her to be. My current curriculum is talking less (try that, especially as a rabbi), sitting down next to her rather than towering over her, smiling rather than scowling, playing rather than cleaning (which is very hard for a Virgo who has never had more stuff in her life than with two kids) and most of all: pivoting, yielding, allowing — whatever you want to call it — relaxing.

She often says to me, “Ima (mama in Hebrew), it’s OK. Don’t worry.” Which is basically, “Chill out lady — it doesn’t have to go the way you planned or even the way you think it should.” Get out of the way and enjoy it just like this. Cue: talk less, sit down, play, smile.

How many of you are enrolled in this same obnoxious, frustrating, often-infuriating curriculum? How many of you wish Dr. Becky, popular parenting guide for DFK’s — deeply feeling kids — would meet your child — or your boss, or your spouse — and try calmly breathing and counting to three before reacting?

I’ve tried. I’m in therapy. I practice breathing. I even do EMDR — rapid eye movement therapy — where I hold my head still and move my eyes left, then right, until my nervous system shifts from the red-hot zone to yellow, then finally back to green, where I sense my calm return.

None of this is easy. But I know it is healing very old patterns — trauma, fight and flight, the scars that get in the way of the mom I aspire to be, the someday spouse I aspire to be, the rabbi, the Jew, the soul I was given to be in this world.

This is the avodah, the sacred work of being alive. And we have support — tools, thousands of years of wisdom, and a community of Jews literally sitting next to us, willing to grow together. As Rabbi Donniel Hartman says, “Greatness is in using our instability to grow.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve got plenty of instability to work with.

This time of year also helps. Our tradition teaches that in Elul and the High Holy Days, “HaMelech basadeh — the King is in the field.” The Holy One leaves the palace, gets off the high horse, and comes close — to be accessible, intimately present in our daily lives. This is a season of closeness with God, with ourselves and with one another. Just look around: here we are, gathered from near and far, considering our souls, telling the truth about what we have done and what we have not.

And here’s the thing: it’s not only that we long for God. The tradition says God longs for us. God already wrote the check. We just need to sign our name.

God got off God’s horse. The question is, can we? Would we rather be right, or would we rather be happy?

My teacher, Rabbi Mickey Rosen of blessed memory, used to say: “The good news is the sacred is everywhere in our daily lives. The bad news is we have to look for it.”

The Baal Shem Tov told it this way: Once there was a king who longed for his people, but they were too busy to visit. So the king built a magnificent castle and invited them in. The truth was, the castle was only an illusion. Anyone with the courage to approach would discover the walls were not real, the gates were unlocked, the way wide open. But most people took one look at the walls and gave up.

“So it is with us,” the Baal Shem Tov said. We start out seeking God, but too quickly we believe the obstacles are real and we give up. Until one day, someone asks, “What if this wall is only an illusion?” She reaches out, and the wall disappears.

What if? That’s the turning point.

What if the walls are gates?

What if the experience of loss, rejection or scarcity is actually an invitation to connection?

What if the thing that feels impossible is precisely the doorway we’ve been waiting for?

As Sybil says: “Yes, that’s OK. Don’t worry.” I hear her invitation, “Ima, what if life were easy?”

Nature also shows us this way of being and invites us to join her. The river flows. The mountain crumbles when it must. The flower lets its petals fall without fear. A glacier drifts without a map, yet exactly where it belongs. 

The poet Mary Oliver writes in her Morning Poem:

“Every morning the world is created …  each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered — lavishly, every morning — whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.”

And so I pray — for myself, for all of us — that as the world grows more complex, filled with hate and war, hunger and fear, we remember as Oliver says, “If it is [our] nature to be happy [we] will swim away along the soft trails for hours, [our] imagination alighting everywhere.”

Sounds nice to swim away along soft trails, doesn’t it?

Especially this year, may we keep asking: What if?

What if it were easy?

What if I choose joy?

What if I let go and trust the flow?

What if Sybil is right, once again?  

“It’s OK, Ima. Don’t worry. It’s easy.” 

Rabbi Alyson Solomon is a courage coach, prayerful poet and consultant. She is the author of two books: Thank You, Modeh Ani & Listen, Sh’ma and producer and singer of: Thank You For This Body. Rabbi Alyson’s courses and programs are for people and organizations hungry to align their inner world with their worldly productivity and performance. Build, deepen and apply your own custom spiritual tool box, enriched by 4000 years of Jewish wisdom, curated by RAS. thisisras.com