There was a lot of push back to last week’s post “Growing At The Bottom Of The Heap”. A friend pointed out that the push back supports the Ramchal’s point that people are uncomfortable being on the bottom. One friend related an experience on how a pharmacy employee treated a wealthy customer and one of lessor means. The hierarchies at play were clear as day.
Recognizing the financial, wisdom and spiritual accomplishment hierarchies will help us improve ourselves regarding pride, anger, envy and desire for honor. However the most important Jewish hierarchy is the one of self-comparison, are we better Torah Observant Jews today then we were yesterday, last month, last year, ten years ago. This is the hierarchy of constant spiritual growth.
One difficulty with assessing spiritual growth is that because it happens gradually, we don’t always see the change. A second difficulty is that the rate of healthy growth is particular to each individual based on their nature and nurture. It’s not one size fits all. A third difficult is that we’re often afraid to do the introspection which improves our growth because of the pain that it might bring.
Growth is hard and it’s easy to fall back on the other-focused hierarchies which give rise to the bad middos of pride, anger, envy and desire for honor. Fortunately Hashem gave us multiple avenues of growth such as Torah, Prayer, Mitzvos, Kindness and Middos Improvement. I think our community is more collectively focused on growth, but this is one hierarchy where today’s top becomes tomorrow’s bottom, meaning, we have to keep on working.
