To Deal or Not To Deal

My talented friend Oren Schneider wrote a beautiful book about his grandfather’s harrowing experience in a Nazi concentration camp, where as a teenager, he managed to help sabotage the Nazi war machine (English, Hebrew).

At the beginning of the book, Oren vividly describes the life of European Jews getting worst by the day. Yet many people who had the opportunity to escape chose to stay. They didn’t want to give up the life they knew, their community, or their assets, so they chose to believe things will get better. The quintessential frog-in-water situation.

This made me wonder—what would I have done in their shoes? Would I have had the self-honesty and courage to leave? Then I looked at my own privileged life, which doesn’t even bear mentioning in the context of such suffering, and realized that even in my extreme fortune when the stakes are relatively insignificant, I sometimes choose denial.

We may not want to deal with something because we convince ourselves it’s fine, and the price of “rocking the boat” is high. Sometimes it’s our people-pleasing tendencies, sometimes our reluctance to deal with the alternative.

But it’s never fine. It takes a mental and emotional toll, which we ignore because it’s internal (or so we tell ourselves until it starts manifesting physically).

I’ve lived that recently. I’ve deluded myself into thinking that maintaining the status quo was the right choice, when it took a massive toll on my happiness, my productivity, and my creativity. Deep inside, I knew it was the wrong choice, but it seemed like the easier—and therefore better—choice. I failed in calling myself out when I was making the avoidant choice. However, the more I identify those situations, even in hindsight, the less I can excuse such choices in the moment.

What would you have done as a Jew in Nazi Europe? Are you making the same choices in your own life?

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