Silence, Rachel Doyle

This week’s middah is Sh’tikah (Silence), something I’ve found myself surrounded by as of late. This may surprise people who know me since I have twin seven-month olds. But it turns out that when you spend 80 hours a week nursing in a silent and darkened room so each baby doesn’t get distracted, you spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts. 

It turns out my semi-monastic life-style puts me in good company. As Alan Morinis outlines in this week’s chapter, our rabbis held silence in great esteem, seeing it as the precursor of wisdom. Rabbi Perr said “Because when you are quiet a lot of things that will come into your mind will come not from your mind but min ha’shamayim. You grow from that.  You become a different person from that.” 

I’ve found that most of my thoughts seem to stem more from my yetzer hara (evil inclination). I’ll spend hours mentally arguing with people over parenting decisions I feel insecure about or focus in on my ever-growing list of complaints. Already tired and worn out, it’s easy to let my yetzer hara win out and stay in these fantasies and let it influence my mood and actions as well. 

Instead, I’ve been trying to use principles I’ve learned from various meditation and psychotherapy practices to curate my thoughts.  Imagined arguments are areas for me to see where I feel insecure and dig into it. Complaints show me which areas of my life need tending and self-compassion. I try to practice “Opposite Action”. If I’m feeling resentful towards someone in my life, I begin to list the ways I’m grateful for them or how they are going through a hard time as well. It takes a lot of self-control, and I’m not always successful, but I’m working towards making my thoughts (and thus my feelings and later actions) better match the middot I want to embody. 

I haven’t gotten my mind still enough in the silence to hear G-d’s voice. But silence has allowed me to make my own inner-voice more G-d-like. And that is enough for me at this moment.