Rosh Hashanah 5774: Where does this road lead?

Where Does this Road Lead?

I want to share a painful story today, one that strikes home for me. This is about something very mundane: the traffic intersection a block away, at Ocean & church. I cross it a couple times every day. I cross it with my wife, with my daughter, with congregants. As anyone knows who has tried to cross it, it is terribly dangerous: drivers turning from Church Ave are in a rush to get on the expressway, with only you standing in their way.
On June 22, I was crossing Ocean parkway with a congregant, and I asked, in an off-hand remark, does someone have to die before they make intersection safer? She said, probably.
Two days later, a local resident, Ngozi Agbim, was struck & killed crossing Ocean parkway
It turns out, this is not a new issue. Between 1995 and 2008, 4 people were killed and 36 struck. I myself saw a cyclist struck by a car, and helped him get back up; the car that struck him honked and the driver swore at the cyclist while speeding off. Brad Lander’s office received $200,000 a few years ago to work on improving the safety, but nothing happened. The various commissions and citizens groups are at a total impasse.
So why haven’t the politicians resolved it? Because all of the solutions seemed unfeasible. A pedestrian bridge would be tens of millions of dollars, so it’s not happening. Changing the traffic patterns would require traffic engineers, cooperation with different agencies, reprogramming all the lights down Ocean parkway, so it’s not happening.
Why can politicians afford to sit on their hands? Because they are not the ones risking their lives crossing Ocean parkway. They do not cross it on Shabbes with their wife, with their daughter. They are not the ones whose lives are at risk. It is an abstraction to them, and we don’t tend to act strongly on abstractions.
I raise this not to talk specifically about that intersection, but to raise a braoder question: When do we say “enough is enough”? When do we stop enduring the pain of a given situation, and decide to break through the inertia and act? Often we sit on our hands waiting for things to get better, because we feel like doing anything else seems too difficult.
The natural course of things is that we do not change our ways until the situation is absolutely intolerable. We delay until the pain of inaction outweighs the perceived difficulty of acting. It’s not that we don’t know there’s an issue, it’s that we can’t get ourselves to commit to a solution until we really have to. With alcoholics, this is called hitting rock bottom.
The problem is, with many issues, once we get to that point there may be no turning back. The destruction may be permanent.
The approach, that advocated by our tradition, is to try to see the future. No, of course we can’t see the future, but we can ask ourselves what will happen if we continue to lead our life the way we are leading it? The tradition teaches us to make decisions based not on how it feels right now, but on where the path I am walking will end up.
Pirke Avot says “who is wise? He who sees the new moon.” Imagine looking on a moonless night, and knowing the new moon will come. Knowing what’s coming down the road. Pirke Avot is saying, make your decisions based on where your decisions will take you down the road. Change before you actually hit painful, intolerable consequences.
We sometimes talk about teshuvah as repenting, getting past a particular sin. But teshuvah literally means turning—turning, in our life, toward a pathway of righteousness, of mercy. What road am I going to take? I can turn, make sure my path is going in the right direction, even if I haven’t sinned. I can change habits before they become an issue, before I suffer terrible consequences.
I want to talk about two specific areas where I see this phenomenon: the first example is on a global level, and the second is in our homes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently measured atmospheric levels of CO2 at 400 ppm. This is a first, for recent history. The last time it was at that level was 2.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, when temperatures rose as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea levels ranged between 16-131 feet higher than current levels. If we wait until it is really intolerable, until New York gets flooded every few months, it may be too late to reverse it. Sea levels are going to rise, maybe 6 feet, maybe 13, maybe 30, depending who you ask and how far out you extend the predictions.
Why don’t we switch from a carbon based economy? Germany has done it. Meanwhile we pursue other sources of carbon emissions, poisoning our ground to dig for gas. Why don’t we change?
We don’t change because the perceived cost of change is so enormous. We don’t want to give up our cars. We don’t want to invest millions in alternative energy. We don’t want to be bothered. And because any terrible consequences are down the road, around the bend, so they don’t seem real. My car is real, I don’t want to give it up. Global food shortages and flooding are abstract and sound like the ravings of extremists, so I don’t really believe in them. I certainly don’t want to pay more taxes to pay for alternative energy sources—money is real, the environment is quaint. So we sit on our hands, live our lives as usual, and pump more carbon into the atmosphere, making it much harder to fix it down the road.
Another area I see this issue is in our relationships.
“White Men Can’t Jump” is a movie about 2 basketball hustlers, Sydney and Billy. Billy is constantly making wagers and losing money, and Gloria wants Billy to stop losing money on basketball, to stop betting money.
There is a great piece of wisdom in the movie from Sydney, Billy’s teammate and rival. Sydney tells him to “listen to the woman.” Sydney then baits him into a wager that Billy can’t slam dunk, and Billy loses all his money on that wager. He didn’t listen to the woman. In the final scene, we see Gloria rollerskating off into the sunset. Billy should have listened to her.
Typically, when couples come for marriage counseling, it is too late—they are coming on heels of years of miscommunication & resentments. They haven’t been listening to each other for years. I know of one marriage therapist who after years of being unable to help patients fix their relationships, changed strategies. Now, instead of relationship therapy, she helps them with the pain of getting divorced. Because by the time people go to therapy, it is often too late. Resentments, inattention, cruelty have been lingering, festering for years, only increasing the negative feelings.
If I am in a relationship, a friendship, a marriage, I could tolerate okay, and believe things won’t get worse. Or I can work now to make my spouse happy, to shower them with love and attention.
Can we take our spouses requests, complaints seriously? Can we address minor issues before they become major? Can we heal our relationships before they actually deteriorate?
Ezehu ashir, haroeh et hanolad
Who is rich? He who sees what’s coming, who plans a course of action based on the long term results.
May we all have the wisdom to live lives which bring about long term healing, blessing and peace,
To take seriously the dangers facing our planet, and the issues facing our homes, our relationships,
And to be brave and humble in making whatever changes we need, to creating the brightest future we can,
to write ourselves into the book of life for the upcoming year.
Lshanah tovah tchateymu