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Tiferet of Chesed
Hi everyone, Jordan again, the savvy millennial voice actress who's also Jewish. Today is the third day of the Omer.
Today's focus is Tiferet of Chesed. Tiferet can be translated as beauty, splendor, harmony, balance, and compassion. Chesed again is loving-kindness. So let's stick with the balance part, the balance of love.
On the sefirot tree, we have Chesed on the right being the unfettered mercy, love, kindness, and then Gevurah on the left being judgment, strength, discipline. So we need to find a balance, and that's Tiferet in the middle.
We can't have only discipline, because that's how you end up with kids too scared to be themselves. We can't have only boundless love, because then you get spoiled, lazy kids. So this is where the sayings "be cruel to be kind" and "kill it with kindness" meet. If someone does horrible hate crimes, the only way to make them see the error of their ways is to bring them in. Show them kindness, because likely they never got any as a child. Of course, hold them accountable for their actions, but somehow we have to treat them like anyone else after that.
Yeah, this is a difficult one. It's hard to be nice to a yelling customer when you're just the store person, not the one who made the product. But here's another example of where The Four Agreements comes in, the part about "don't take anything personally." They may be mad at me because they have no other face to be mad at.
Or when I was bullied for being quiet on the school bus, maybe those kids felt powerful because they didn't feel powerful anywhere else in life. It's really annoying and still not nice, and I'm still learning to see other people's emotions belong to them, not me, but this is the kill it with kindness path.
Working at a theme park, I learned LAST: listen, apologize (even if it's not your fault - this is just to validate them), solve, thank. Give without expecting to receive.
Compassion, empathy, and understanding are what's most lacking in a society that kills itself over cheeseburgers, road rage, getting fired from a job, and more. Yes, these are all stories I had to caption back when I did closed captioning for five years. Or fans that send bomb threats to authors and actors when their character ship doesn't happen or their fan fiction theory doesn't come true. There needs to be a balance to your love of the story and compassion for the actor who had to portray your hated character, understanding they're just an actor, not a writer.
I probably got off track, but this all makes sense in my brain. Love needs a balance to be truly beautiful. Obsessing over a story, fictional character, or real person can be fun for a bit, but please give them space, let the author write their story. Temper your love for another in that you let them figure things out and give them space, but also be willing and able to help when they ask.
What can we do for today? Offer a helping hand to a stranger. Listen to someone without expecting you'll get to speak. Show yourself compassion if you're tired and go to bed earlier. See you next time.
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