My ten-year-old son, Jake, has become excessively frightened by lightning. He used to be mildly scared by the noise of thunder. But his fear was augmented by one random event this past summer.
While our family was at a restaurant celebrating a win after one of my son’s ballgames, a storm popped up. During this typical Northeast summer thunderstorm, the building was hit by lightning. We heard the giant crack of thunder simultaneously with a brilliant burst of light. A window in the restaurant shattered and the power went out. The staff gathered us into a protected room away from the broken glass and calmly helped us wait until it was safe to drive home.
It was a dramatic event for sure, but now my sweet boy shutters at the thought of a rainstorm. After talking with other parents who have children the same age we realized that he and his friends are at the stage in life when they first butt up against the realization that there are some things in life they cannot control, and—perhaps more upsetting—neither can their parents. The lightning strike was his light bulb moment of fear, followed by the awareness that his parents could not protect him from all of the vagaries of life.
Jake’s way of dealing with his new-found insecurity is to exert what he believes is a form of control. Every day, he takes my iPhone and checks weather applications to watch for storms. He feels this will make him safe. Logically, he knows that nothing can stop a weather system from moving in, but the more superstitious part of him supersedes logic. No matter how much Jake learns about meteorology, it’s not going to stop what really makes him afraid. He has now been introduced to the fact that the world is sometimes random.
The vexing aspect of this fear is that he, like so many of us adults, spends more time pretending he can control the uncontrollable than he does working on understanding what he can do to protect himself in the case of a real emergency.
This is what we human beings do. We feel terrified of the unknown and so we pretend to control what we can’t touch. Our faith can sometimes becomes one of superstition instead of self-care and preparation. We don’t visit the doctor in fear of the diagnosis. We don’t set up our child’s nursery in fear of tempting the evil eye to visit upon the womb. We wear red bracelets to ward off evil.
We all feel attached to certain family traditions. But I worry when superstition becomes a proxy for our religion. Our faith can be one that encourages us to live healthy and secure lives; one which prepares us to face all of the challenges which come our way. Expending energy on that which we cannot control will only steal away from the aspects of our lives which we can indeed control.
Randomness is frightening. The unknown shakes us to our core. I pray regularly that lighting does not strike any of my children. But in the meanwhile, my wife and I do our best to prepare them for the realities of a life which comes along with extraordinary blessing and the reality of physical and cosmic storms.
If any Holiday teaches about finding joy in the midst of fragility, it is indeed these days of Sukkot. All of our structures are relatively temporary. When we realize we can only control certain aspects of our lives, we might find our way to a bolstered inner-compass and a perpetuated sense of calm.
