Maimonides offers us a very practical standard against which to measure our progress in making amends: if we find ourselves in the same situation and do not sin then we know we have moved on. But is it really possible to find ourselves in exactly the same situation?
I don't think so. In fact I suspect that many of us use the fact that no two situations are exactly alike to excuse our failure to change our behavior. But I think we can read Maimonides teaching in a much more subtle manner.
If situations are always new and different, what, then, is constant in our lives? What really repeats? If not the experiences themselves, then what?
The one constant is the sense of self we create when we look at the different moments of our lives. I look at a picture of myself at 4 years old and call that person "me." I can then tell you how that "me" became the "me" I am today. The more sophisticated my story the stronger my sense of "me" is. But no matter the level of sophistication, the story is always a fiction. Historical fiction, perhaps, but fiction nonetheless.
The self is a construct of the narrative we spin to articulate our lives. Without it all we have are discreet moments in time. We can compare this to a motion picture. A movie is really a series of still pictures seen so quickly as to give us the illusion of selves in relation to others. Our lives are a series of moments which we tie together with a psychological narrative that creates a self in relation to others. This is normal and often healthy. But sometimes the story we tell and the self it creates is not healthy.
Maimonides is saying that as long as we remain within an unhealthy story we will see patterns of repeated unhealthy behavior. The patterns emerge not from the external reality of the situation itself, but from the story in which we place the specific situation. If we are to change our behavior we have to change our story. When we change our story we create the possiblity of teshuvah.
It is not enough to compare moments and situations. What is required is a change of story. This is deep and difficult work. Yet this is the challenge of Elul: not to change our self, but to change the story that creates our sense of self in the first place.
Metivta -- Los Angeles, California
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