In
EmunahSpeak:
Nothing but Thoughts, Rabbi
Shalom Arush told us in the name of Rebbe Nachman that character traits are
nothing but thoughts, with the prevailing thoughts delineating the essence of
one’s mindset at any given time.
A
person usually speaks what’s on his mind, so if the prevailing thoughts in one’s
head are grist for the loshon hora mill is there any wonder as to what’s going
to spring forth from between those not so tightly closed lips?
If
you don’t think it you can’t say it, and if you do think it make sure it’s
squeaky clean.
In GuardYourSpeak:
The Clarity of Context, we
observed that Whatever you see your neighbor do you also did once upon a
time or may well do tomorrow with but a slight variation on the theme, not
enough to take it out of whatever aveira was the touchstone between your two
neshamos at different points in time.
And on this we
asked, (so) why is it that there is a Grand Canyon disconnect between the
understanding with which you view your actions and the jaundiced eye that you
cast upon the missteps of your friend, sufficient to ignite within you a desire
to talk about it?
The answer, of
course, was that we are more accepting of ourselves because we possess the
clarity that comes from being cognizant of the context from which all of our
mistakes flow, which in turn enhances our understanding of all of our
shortcomings.
But
while context goes a long way in explaining the double standard by which we judge
the actions of others vis รก vis our own, it doesn’t go the total route.
It’s a montage with a wide angle focus that can present us with a myriad of facts
sufficient to morph what was originally nothing but a bare bones sketch into
a high resolution image bursting with detail as to the back story of what it
was that caught our eye. That in turn impacts on what motivated the behavior
that was weighed by us and found wanting.
But
there are other times where the context of a situation is an open book that's in our face, and it may
not even be a situation in which we are dwelling on yenem’s faults which, as we
said above, will almost invariably lead to loshon hora, while rationalizing our
own. Maybe it’s a case where your friend is, in fact, messing up while you’re
being a big tzaddik.
There’s
someone in your shul that shows up late every morning about two minutes before
Borchu, and he doesn’t come rushing in either. And it just so happens that you’re the first
one there. You don’t know him that well
but you do know that there’s nothing doing in his house that would slow him up
in the morning.
The
number of kindred scenarios is only circumscribed by the limits of your
imagination, and it goes without saying that both your mind and tongue should
be focused elsewhere just as it should always be except when there is a
legitimate toellis afoot.
We’re
talking here about our inability to see past our self imposed delineation of reality.
In the situations where we are find ourselves bereft of proper context, such as those which we spoke about in GuardYourSpeak: The Clarity of Context,
our tendency, as we said, is to cast a cold eye on the other guy's doings while rationalizing our own miss-steps.
But on other occasions, when there is a clear distinction in our favor between our
avoda and that of our friend, leaving us nothing to rationalize, it never occurs to us that for all we know,
maybe talking during davening is the one thing he does wrong whereas never uttering a word during davening is the one thing we do right.
