A story I really love tells of a man who would sit every evening in a bar, drink beer but never to the end. The last bit of the beer, he would spray on the people around him. Naturally, this irritated the public, and the bartender wasn’t thrilled either.
One evening, the bartender turned to him and said: “Why don’t you go for some kind of emotional or psychological therapy to deal with this? It’s not acceptable that you come here every night and spray beer on the customers.” The bartender even offered to pay for five sessions with a professional.
A month and a half passed, and the man showed up again at the bar.
“I’m a new man,” he said. “The therapy was wonderful.”
“In that case, the first beer is on me,” said the bartender, proud of their shared success.
Fifteen minutes later, to the bartender’s shock, the man sprayed the remainder of his beer on the customers.
Angry, upset, and disappointed, the bartender asked: “Didn’t you say you had therapy and became a new man?”
“Indeed I did, and absolutely so,” replied the beer-sprayer.
“So what did the psychologist tell you there?” asked the bartender.
“Well,” said the man, “she told me something wonderful that no one had ever said to me before. She told me: ‘Be who you are, and be proud of it!’ And as you can see, I am who I am - I spray beer on people — and I’m proud of it.”
The sharp-eyed among my followers have noticed that this week my family and I spent time in the Swiss mountains, as is customary here. We walked a lot in nature, took a cable car up to about 2,100 meters above sea level, and walked back down on foot to our lodging, which lies some 700 meters below that, at around 1,400 meters above sea level. The descent is long and winding, but slow and pleasant. The family walks together, talks, sings, meditates, laughs, gets annoyed when necessary, and of course pauses to eat sliced fruit. For a long time now, I no longer call this a “family trip” but rather “family therapy.”
Yesterday we walked along a mountainside completely covered in trees, a real forest. For part of the time, I walked ahead alone, marveling at the wondrous creation of Hashem, thinking of the Baal Shem Tov, who began his path in a forest. I looked at the trees and suddenly noticed something interesting: the trees growing on the slope of the mountain, even on a steep incline, all have their tops pointing upward toward the heavens. They don’t grow straight relative to the ground in which they’re rooted, but instead bend and curve upward.
As the trunk emerges from the earth, it immediately curves and straightens itself so that the tree will grow upright.
There is, of course, no person there to direct the trees to grow correctly. No gardener to educate or force them upward. So how is this?
I read briefly that there are several reasons, for example, that the tree seeks its source of light, the sun, and so it directs itself upward. In short: the tree by its very nature, if undisturbed, will grow correctly and orient itself upward.
When the tree remembers to “be who you are,” it grows well and right. But what about me?
I thought about myself. I don’t always grow when oriented upward. If there weren’t a gardener to straighten me, who knows what would happen? And without parents and teachers, isn’t there a risk that my direction wouldn’t be heavenward at all? But why? Why is it that if a person decides simply to “be who you are,” there’s a danger he might grow the opposite way? Isn’t it said that “man is like the tree of the field”?
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but the central difference, in my opinion, is this: a tree has no evil inclination. A tree has no inner force that challenges it. A tree has no temptations full of emotion and reason pulling it one way or another. I do.
Before a person decides to “be who you are,” he must first clarify well: who is this “you”? Is it his divine soul, or his animal soul? Does “I am who I am” mean that I run from thrill to thrill, or that I build endurance in the face of thrills and succeed in pausing before acting? Am I “who I am” when I keep sleeping even though I have obligations, or am I “who I am” precisely when I overcome and rise to meet those obligations?
I agree with the psychologist who told that man, “Be who you are and be proud of it” but only after one has gone through the clarification and refinement. When you know how to connect to your higher self, to the *mensch* within you, then go ahead and be who you are.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski