Wrestling with Demons: Va-yishlach

I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten in the habit of observing my thoughts in preparation for writing my blogs. Like this thought I just wrote down. 

In When Things Fall Apart, by Pima Chodron, I read that the purpose of meditation is not to quiet the mind, but rather to observe the thoughts. Thank God, because I can never seem to quiet my mind. 

Where do my mind and thoughts go? What do the voices inside say? 

I don’t know about you, but usually for me--not such a good place.

I also know that by noticing my thoughts, I can have just a little bit of control over them, and at least try and redirect them. But it takes an inner struggle to do that--a kind of wrestling. In the process, I am transforming the way I view and interact with the world. 

Jacob’s mind, as we can see in this week’s parsha, has been in a terrible state for the past decades. He’s heading back “home”, a successful man with wives, concubines, many children and livestock. He’s meeting his brother, Esau, on the way. 

And he’s absolutely terrified. (Remember Jacob ran away after impersonating Esau so he could steal his father’s blessing, and then Esau was so hurt and angry that he wanted to kill Jacob? Yeah, things were bad.)

Jacob is prepared for the worst possible meeting. He imagines that Esau might attack him, so he devises an intricate plan with servants leading the way, sending them ahead (thus the title of the parsha), dividing his entourage into two camps just in case, announcing gifts to appease Esau, and presenting himself in the most humble fashion. 

When the encounter finally happens, what he imagined would happen never comes true. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Esau hugs him, they fall onto each other and they sob. 

Esau refuses the gifts, stating that he has plenty of his own acquisitions, and only accepts at Yaakov’s pressing. 

I mean! The years of inner torture. How Yaakov’s imagination ran wild, while all the while, the “wild one”, Esau, has come to a place of forgiveness and apparent contentment. 

Esau has apparently done the inner work he needed to do, whereas Jacob, well...not so much. 

In fact, the night Jacob spends alone by the river, he wrestles with an angel, we’re told. 

Or was it his own self? 

It’s curious that it seems to be the angel who begs him to stop, and Jacob answers, “Only if you give me a blessing.” So the angel does. His blessing is a change of name, from Jacob to Israel, Yaakov to Yisrael, which means God-wrestler, according to one translation. It’s a kind of transformation from being the one who comes on the heel of his brother, taking advantage, to someone who faces and wrestles with the demons he himself created.

The wrestling stops, but not without serious injury to Jacob, who goes limping off. 

Esau, meanwhile, seems unscathed and at peace. We are not told of his own transformation and how he came to be the man he is and to forgive Jacob. 

Either way, there’s a process. And there has to be some introspection, whether conscious or not. Maybe Esau had someone to talk to. Or maybe out in the wilderness, he had plenty of quiet time to be alone, think, and observe his thoughts. 

Maybe Jacob was too busy running from the past instead of facing it. 

How many of us torture ourselves with our own thoughts? 

Just thinking about the conversations I’ve had over the past months of this pandemic and the years of having Trump as president, I am reminded of all the fear. (Well, more like terror.)

Like Jacob, we anticipated and planned for the worst: What if the incumbent got re-elected? What if this pandemic never stops? 

But Esau did not attack Jacob; the incumbent did not get re-elected; the pandemic is not over, but it will stop. 

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be prepared for the worst. The worst can happen, and we can sometimes prevent it--with our hard work. In the last years and months, we have seen both what happens when you let things go unchecked, and what happens when you work towards change. 

But here’s the other part I’m getting at: Isn’t it possible to prepare for the worst while also expecting the best? To do the work required while also not predicting doom? 

After all--if we ask how much work it takes to transform the world, we must first ask how much work it takes to transform ourselves. How much wrestling with ourselves and our own thoughts? 

Yes, it takes a lot, and we may feel like we’re being injured in the process, but in fact, maybe we’re just allowing old wounds to come to the surface--whether they’re wounds we personally carry inside, or old wounds in our country that are coming out of the woodwork. 

Scary as it is facing our demons, the outcome of freedom and transformation is worth the effort.