Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. Today is Erev Tisha B’Av so our Emotional Wellness lesson will be based on Tisha B’Av. The opening words of the Megillat Eicha are, “How is it that Jerusalem and the Jewish people are sitting alone?”
This seems strange. If one was writing a description of the Holocaust, with the concentration camps, murderers, gassing and torture, would they write, “How is he sitting alone?”
Does that capture the tragedy? Is that the whole story?
The answer, says Rav Wolbe, is that anyone that's suffering, whether with a disease or any type of challenge, is struggling with that challenge and can not get out of it on his own. He is literally alone in his problems. Rav Wolbe writes, in Alei Shor (vol two, page 210), “More than the suffering of his yissurim, he's suffering from loneliness.” Before he was dealing with his struggle, he was equal to his friends, and therefore, his heart was full of happiness, because people enjoy companionship. But since he's in this challenge, he's been separated from his companionship, and now, not only is he suffering, but he's suffering alone. He quotes a pasuk in Yirmiyah, the author of Eicha, “Because of your hand, I'm sitting alone.”
The deeper the suffering, the deeper the loneliness.
In the words of Rav Wolbe, “There are millions of levels of loneliness.”
He quotes David Hamelech, who, when alone in a cave, says, “Look to the right and see, no one recognizes me. I've lost any place of refuge… take me out of the shackles of my soul.”
Rav Wolbe says the first step to healing somebody is to get into his situation and break through the shackles of his loneliness. That is an important point for people suffering with mental illness. Beside suffering with their illness, anxiety, depression, or worse, bipolar, schizophrenia, mood disorders and OCD etc….they feel, because of the stigma, that they're the only one having these challenges. They feel alone, and that loneliness is worse than anything else.
Rav Chaim Shmulevitz proves this from Iyov, when God tells the Satan, “You can hurt Iyov, but you can't kill him.” Then, after Iyov’s suffering began, his friends came to visit him. Rav Chaim Shmulovitz says that if the Satan had not allowed Iyov’s friends to come and console him, it would have been the equivalent of killing him. A person cannot survive alone. The Gemara tells the famous story of Honi HaMaagal, who went to sleep for 70 years and came back to a town where nobody knew him; to a Bet Midrash where no one recognized him, and he felt down. His state of mind became almost depressed, until the rabbis of the time prayed for his death.
And the Gemara says, “Oh Havruta/either give me friendship,
Oh Metuta/or give me death.” A lack of friendship or companionship is a death sentence.
That is the difficulty that the Jewish people went through during the Churban. The most difficult part was the feeling of being alone.
God's ultimate comfort for us is when we start feeling and rekindling the relationship, because then we don't feel alone. We feel connected to God.
This is important when dealing with people who are suffering- there is a need to create connection, to create a safe place for them to share their suffering.
B’Ezrat Hashem, we can be such people, that people feel comfortable with, to share their suffering and create a safe place for them.
Have a wonderful day.