By Yoav Aftovitzer
Translated from the Hebrew by DeAnna L’am
A Bad Day For Rami
Rami stared in amazement at the bank statement. The unique restaurant, which he lovingly built over years with his own hands, was going down hill in the past few months.
Some of his customers moved on to his competitors, others stopped coming due to the financial crisis. On this very day, after saving his pennies for years, he received another blow: a hasty gamble at the stock market erased his money in one fell swoop.
Rami felt the blood draining from his body. As if his feet couldn’t carry him anymore, he collapsed into a chair. His gaze floated over the room, which used to bustle with activity, hovered among chairs and tables, unable to hold on to anything.
Rami, who used to always initiate and act incessantly, sat paralyzed. His brain, which used to always come up with new ideas, came up with nothing. All seemed lost. Everything he was used to seemed broken and crashed, unfixable and hopeless.
What happens to us when entire life structures suddenly break and collapse?
A crisis may manifest as a separation from loved ones, the breaking of a family, the loss of a secure job, a collapse of our belief system during midlife or another age transition, like a sense of being unable to live the life we have been living.
Being In Crisis
During a crisis, when our usual thought pattern is ineffective, we can find new lanes for coping by understanding the origin of words. Within the story we tell ourselves about what is going on, lays another story that can lead us from trouble to creativity.
The word ‘Crisis’ in Chinese is made of ‘Vi,’ meaning critical danger, and ‘Ji,’ which means an opportunity for change. The same word means ‘A Sharp Turn’ in Greek, while in Hebrew it derives from the breaking of womb water in the process of giving birth.
When the Israelites are under siege in Jerusalem, King Hezkiahu says: “A day of trouble and curse is this day, for my sons came to crisis, and power for birthing is neigh.” (Kings book 2, 19, 3)
In Hezkiahu’s imagery the Israelites are besieged in Jerusalem as a baby is in its mother’s womb. The crisis then becomes a doorway, which we must break open if we want to live. That which has been the source of life, like the womb, may at some point, if “power for birthing is neigh” become a place of death.
Contractions push us into the crisis, the doorway where we have the possibility of choosing life. Such option entails giving up the familiar and entering the unknown.
How can these insights, regarding the nature of crisis, help Rami?
Rami’s body responded to crisis as if it were a situation of critical danger. But unlike a baby, Rami can have a new perspective based on understanding. The fear that grips Rami is rooted in reality. There is danger in his crisis, yet not in the way he sees it. Rami feels stuck and frozen. He tries to grip an entire world that is about to disappear.
The real danger is staying in the narrow womb. The understanding that life is a constant change invites Rami to join the movement that leads into the unknown, like an embryo who joins the enormous contraction pressure and pushes with its small legs toward the womb’s doorway – the crisis.
Crisis is one link in the chain of life. In the same way we deny death within this chain, so we wish to deny constant change. We naturally tend to hold on and preserve seemingly safe and stable worlds. By doing so we unknowingly act against life’s nature.
Turning Crisis Into Opportunity
Insights will not suffice. Action is needed, as well as application. Insight is like the opening of eyes, the first recognition of where we are.
Once we realize we are at a juncture, the crisis becomes opportunity. We are invited to choose how to continue from here on.
Staying too long in the junction can turn from essential to dangerous. Exiting a junction demands choice and action in the world. Only action can turn a crisis into a bridge between worlds. At the edge of the bridge we start walking, hesitatingly yet drawing on our essence, into a new and unfamiliar world.
Crisis stories don’t necessarily have happy endings. A crisis can become a “deadening” experience if our reaction to it is that of freezing, withdrawal, contraction, abstinence, or the perception of ourselves as a failure.
On the other hand, if we manage to see the entire experience in the larger context of life movement, it can become a source of transformation and bring us closer to our essence.
Rami was blessed to have his crisis bring forth new directions. He changed his habit of being a ‘lone wolf,’ rekindled old connections, and created new and surprising ones, which helped him rehabilitate his restaurant with other partners. And partnership with others freed up his schedule for his long lost love: playing music and singing. May we all be so blessed!
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