Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a SIMHA project.
Dr Katzenstein continues…
“Even after we have established and clarified what our values are (I.e understanding with clarity what our purpose is on this earth, why we are here and what kind of impact and contribution we want to make on this earth and on those around us) we tend to get easily distracted and sidetracked. We have busy schedules, we have a lot of responsibilities, and there are many different factors that can make life chaotic and hectic, causing us to lose sight of our values and what we are actually doing here.
To get back on track, I sometimes use a metaphor that my clients find helpful, which is that the US Air Force has a number of different jets, the F-series, that go incredibly fast. At this point, I think some of them go about 2,500 miles an hour. One of the main challenges in flying this aircraft is that the pilot is very likely to develop what the Air Force calls spatial disorientation, when the pilot loses complete sense of where his body is in relation to space.
Essentially, he often can't tell if he's right side up or upside down. Going that fast, it obviously becomes quite dangerous. And since the jet can be flown inverted (upside down), the pilot may think he's upright, so he flies towards what he thinks is the sky, but in reality he's upside down….heading toward the ground and certain death. So how does he know while in a state of complete disorientation, whether he's right side up or upside down?
The answer is that on each aircraft, on its dashboard, there is a compass-like device with an arrow that is always pointing towards the sky. No matter what, the pilot is trained to follow the way the arrow is pointed. Even if he is sure with certainty that he's right side up, if the arrow is pointing downward, he follows the direction that the arrow is pointed. And before he ever steps foot into an aircraft, he goes through hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours of physical and psychological training in a flight simulator, practicing over and over and over again, ensuring that no matter what, when in flight, he always, without any bit of hesitancy, follows that arrow.
So too, our arrows should always be pointed toward our values, not just as Jews, but as human beings that want to live in a society where people are connected to one another, and most importantly, connected to ourselves. That arrow is our gps. And when we find ourselves disoriented, confused, overwhelmed, distracted by different things that life is throwing at us, let's remember which way that arrow is pointed. So when our arrow is pointed toward our values, in a world that is very often upside down, that confuses us about what is truly important, what truly matters, we can refocus ourselves, recalibrate ourselves to live with our values, and go back to them when we get distracted, so that we can return to the values that we hold so dear.”