Over Shavuos I was rereading a book that I find meaningful and inspiring, Emuna with Love and Chicken Soup: Henny Machlis, the Brooklyn-born girl who became a Jerusalem legend. Rebbetzin Machlis was an incredible person with a heart filled with love and concern for others who did hospitality and other acts of kindness on a legendary level. She had clarity about her role and mission, and she accomplished amazing things during her life of just 57 years.
Inspired by my reading, over the holiday we were discussing the idea of doing more open-hearted hosting of guests. I have a need for privacy and personal space that makes it a challenge for me to embrace more than a fraction of Henny’s level of giving, but each person can increase their good deeds in their own way and that’s what I was thinking about. Though I’ve done a lot of hosting over the years (and still regularly have guests), it’s not an area I feel inspired to invest more efforts into.
It’s not hard to give if you receive profuse thanks for your efforts. However, how can you give without feeling resentment when your efforts don’t receive recognition, or are taken for granted? I was thinking a lot about this, because when something is hard for me I need more positive feedback to offset that. Then something happened that helped me find my answer to this.
That same day we had this conversation about hosting, I was asked to visit with a mother of a new baby who wasn’t feeling well. After I left, I thought about how to help this mother, and my first thoughts were to find bigger solutions. But I’m not the source of bigger solutions, so it left me feeling useless.
Then I thought it would be better to think what I could do to help that would fit into my schedule and match my giving capacity at this time. I can’t offer to take care of a bunch of small children at my home, or go there to babysit for an extended period. So what could I do?
I have a 45 minute window for 7:15 – 8 am after my kids go on their van to school, before I get busy with my tasks for the day. So I knocked at their door and told her husband I had 45 minutes to help with post-holiday clean up.
Since they’re a much smaller family than mine, their dishes are a drop in the bucket for me! In the time I had, I was able to wash the dishes, clean the counters and sweep the floor.
On my way out, I noticed the laundry hamper was full and took it home with me. I have a big washing machine and enjoy doing laundry, so that’s easy for me.
The mother was sleeping after being up for hours in the night with her sick baby, so she didn’t see me when I was there. We happened to bump into each other at the health clinic later that morning, and she thanked me for the lovely surprise of waking up to a clean kitchen.
Since I did tasks that were doable for me, I didn’t need the approbation and appreciation I would have needed if I had done something that was a big stretch. I felt good about my actions but there was nothing that I did that felt hard or noble, that I would be constantly telling myself how amazing I am for doing these incredible acts of kindness or feel frustrated that my kindnesses weren’t adequately noticed.
All of my initial thoughts about how to help felt hard for me. My lesson to myself is to do the things that are a fit with who I am and the resources I have available. If it feels like too much, chances are that’s not the right thing for me to do at this time. It’s better to extend one’s self with something smaller and be able to help again in the future, than to burn oneself out and feel frustrated/hostile/resentful by taking on something too big.
As far as big things, if a person starts small and works up, over time his capacity for giving grows and later on those big things become doable to him. It’s undeniable that Rebbetzin Machlis continually grew her capacity for giving. Something I really appreciated about her biography is that the focus wasn’t on, ‘look how amazing this person is’, but on how she became the person she became. And that’s actually inspiring, because then there are steps a person can take to become a better person himself.
Avivah
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