The visions of our tomorrows are limited by the paradigms of our yesterdays. To be able to see this vision we need to shatter some paradigms first.
Movement
Before saving Noach from global disaster, the Torah informs us what about him earned that right to special treatment; he was righteous and perfect in his generation. But when Lech Lecha, the parshaabout the life and times of Avraham, opens, we are not told why Hashem singles him out and directs him to leave his place of birth. The Ramban (Bereishis 12:3) makes this observation, and the SeffasEmmes (Lech Lecha 5632) suggests a remarkable insight to explain it.
Based on the Zohar, the Seffas Emmes suggests that the opening verse (12:1) itself identifies the uniqueness of Avraham that merited G-d's intervention in his life. He says:
For this in and of itself is the praise: the fact that (Avraham) heard this statement of "Lech lecha" ("go for yourself from your land…."), a statement that is made by Hashem to every individual all the time, and Avraham heard it and acted on it.
G-d talks to each of us constantly; we just don't hear. He instructs each of: "Go for yourself from your land, from your birth place and from the house of your father to the land that I will show you." There is something much deeper in this than a directive to pack our bags and go to live in Israel, which is a mitzvah in and of itself. Lech lechais something different and we should unpack the meaning of thistzivuy (commandment) and the implications of acting on it.
Every journey entails a measure of discomfort: The discomfort of leaving familiar surroundings and routines, the discomfort of being in places and situations where the assumptions that used to work for you no longer do, the discomfort of insecurity. Lech lecha entreats us to undertake the most significant journey of our lives - the journey to discover ourselves and to live our destinies. For each of us G-d has a destination, a place He has designed for us; a place in which we can live our potential, make our marks and pursue our purpose. G-d waits for us to set out on our journey so that He can show us thisplace, but first we must leave the comforts of the external crutches on which we currently rely for the illusion of our security. This journey is a life-long journey and it entails all the discomforts of travel.
Literally, lech lechah means go to yourself. Hashem directs you to undertake a journey to your own inner self. "I have a place to show you," Hashem says, "a place that is different and perhaps even distant from where you are." This is the place where you will find your true destiny. However to see the place Hashem is showing us we need to leave the comfort of the paradigms we were raised with and that shape everything we think and every norm we adopt. The visions of our tomorrows are limited by the paradigms of our yesterdays. To be able to see this future vision we need to shatter some paradigms first. We need to travel away from the assumptions with which we are familiar and be ready to explore possibilities we have never before contemplated.
To abandon assumptions even before we have new ones with which to replace them is the hardest thing. Yet unless we are willing and able to detach our sense of security and identity from our old paradigms we will never be open to new ones.
Questioning old assumptions so as to explore new ones brings with it more than growth and expansiveness. It also infuses vitality into our living; the vitality we feel and project when we are experiencing the new rather than being stuck in the groove of old mental routines. When we discover a new thought, a new angle from which to view the world or a new insight, we become more alive, and others can sense that too. We feel inspired and we can inspire others. We cannot inspire others when we are not inspired, and we cannot be inspired if we are intellectually and spiritually stagnant.
"In a wise question is half the answer."
So how do we move away from the paradigms with which we were raised and educated, and with which we feel so comfortable and secure?
When I start an innovation workshop, I ask the group whether they have any holy cows - any assumptions they are not willing to question and if necessary abandon. This gives me a sense of their readiness to travel to new intellectual places, build new assumptions and innovate new products, strategies or processes. Of course in any discipline there are certain axioms within which one needs to think and operate. But by holy cows I mean social norms, accepted orthodoxies that are not essential to the integrity of the process. In Torah we also have axioms within which we operate. Our faith, Torahmi'Sinai, the supremacy of the Torah in our lives and thoughts and the uncompromising truth of halacha are such axioms, as is the method with which we analyze, question and innovate withinhalacha. However, within the guardrails of our mesorah, we should be ready to question everything. We learn from the style of thegemorrah itself, the rishonim and the gedolei ha'acharonim (various periods of Torah scholarship) how they questioned every assumption irrespective of the source and that way innovated and discovered new insights and life-changing principles. Questioning need not come from a place of challenging authority but from a place of questing to understand. We won't always find the answers, but we will be on a pathway of growth instead of one of stagnation. One can live without answers, but what kind of life is one without questions?
We need to teach our children and students how to ask penetrating questions not how to give standardized answers. We need to train ourselves to be more comfortable asking even seemingly outrageous questions. If something doesn't feel or sound right to us, we should question it irrespective of the authority with which it is taught to us. We should question anything that appears illogical or irrational. How else will we understand it's essence, the core of its meaning? How else will we make it our own? We need to become non-defensive when others ask us penetrating questions, because these are the questions that compel us to leave the safe shores of our childhood assumptions and explore new horizons of more mature ideas. Our journey to truth requires that we leave our shores of safe answers and ply the uncertain oceans of our vigorous questions.
Even in the art of questioning there is the safe and there is the adventurous. Closed ended questions are usually quite safe. Open-ended questions are more challenging because we can never know beforehand where they will end. We are mostly quite good at asking closed-ended questions such as What? How? When? Where? Who? We are not as comfortable asking the Why question. Yet it is the whyquestion that can truly shatter an old paradigm and lead to a new way of thinking. In Torah we often tend to short-circuit the thinking process by answering the why question with "because that is what G-d wants." This short-circuiting of the thinking process can lead to dangerous fundamentalism rather than to dynamic growth. We need to follow that answer with another question: "Why does G-d want this for us?" We need to probe how the things we do in the name of Hashem improve our spiritual beings, help others, improve the world and sanctify His name.
Questions are the way we start journeys of discovery. Questions are the instruments of creative thought. Questions are how we discover the meaning of all life and the purpose of our own lives. Through questioning we begin the lech lecha journey by creating discomfort with the status quo and, a discomfort that propels us forward into a vision of the land that I will show you.
