CHOOSE TO SHINE

Stop, Breathe, and Think. 

Simply Being.

10% Happier. 

Calm. 

Headspace.

These are not mantras. Rather, these are the names of five out of more than one thousand different apps available to help you relieve stress, reduce anxiety, and take pause in your hectic life. Mindfulness has grown into an industry which generates over 1 billion dollars a year in sales. People seek respite from the overwhelming pressures and the avalanche of competing distractions that assault us at all times. We as a society have bought into a culture of FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – on everything that is going on. If we lived for one thousand years, we could not possibly experience everything that exists. This is especially true given that there are currently over 1.7 billion websites, with more added every second. The average American watches nearly five hours of television every day, per Nielsen Media Research. That is down from over eight hours a day a decade ago, before most people owned smart phones.

Why are we so interested in putting life on hold, even for a few moments? Is this some new phenomenon? Is it our life choices and environment which are generating such widespread stress, or is there possibly more at work here?

The National Institute of Mental Health recently completed a study of more than 9,000 brain scans. They compared the images from patients with anxiety disorders to the brain scans of healthy adults. A fascinating pattern emerged. It showed unusually low activity in the part of the brain which allows one to stop their recurring thoughts. Researchers also found excessively high levels of activity where emotions and feelings are processed. This indicates that the brains of those with anxiety disorders are stuck in a vortex of negative thoughts and emotions. They cannot just decide to snap out of it and get happy. That will not work for them.

These findings do not show cause and effect, only correlation. It has yet to be determined whether this is caused by, or is simply a result of other factors. The good news is that this study provides a path to help find which therapies may work best for treating this life-disrupting challenge. In the interim, if mindfulness and meditation help those who have trouble turning off the racket, then perhaps we can use those methods to help us live happier lives. 

I was thinking about what our own rich heritage might offer in the way of taking a break and disconnecting for a brief period (aside from the Sabbath, of course). A friend of mine drew a parallel to the custom that Jewish women do no work while the Chanukah candles burn (OC 670:1).  In fact, unlike the Shabbos candles whose light is meant to illuminate our homes, the light of the Chanukah candles exists solely for us to remember the miracle. They are not to be used for anything else, even reading. That is why we have the shamash candle, whose light is permitted.

Chanukah commemorates the victory of the spiritual over the physical, the Torah over Hellenism. The Greeks sought to remove us from our traditions and heritage by offering vapid pursuits of pleasure, entertainment, and secular studies. They had stadiums and amphitheaters, sporting events and universities of higher learning. Of the four exiles the Jewish people must suffer, the Greco-Roman exile is by far the longest and the most challenging. Today, we have stadiums, theaters, and even a Senate, as they did in Rome. Make no mistake that we remain in that same very long exile. The few defeated the many, the weak conquered the strong, and the pure vanquished the impure. We can celebrate and take inspiration to keep us on the right path as we wait for the end of this final exile.

Stopping everything to watch the Chanukah candles give forth that special glow is an opportunity to do nothing else but think about our place and our duty in this world. What are our priorities? Everything else that fills our time and our thoughts must be subject to careful examination to determine if they are helping us fulfill our purpose, or distracting us from our true path.