Author Sylvia Boorstein, born to Judaism and now connected deeply with Buddhism, says,“I grew up in a post-Depression household. My parents had jobs, and I’m an only child. My parents went off to work, so my grandmother did a great deal of the mothering, and she was very, very solicitous…the only thing that she was not moved to respond to, was the coming and going of childhood bouts of “I’m not happy.” …my grandmother was not a learned woman in that sense, but it’s an ethnic thing to use that Talmudic turn of phrase –and she’d say, “Where is it written that you’re supposed to be happy all the time?” And I actually think it was the beginning of my spiritual practice that life is difficult… life is inevitably challenging, and how are we going to do it in a way that’s wise…?”
Drawing a fascinating analogy, Boorstein says, “The GPS in my car never gets annoyed at me. If I make a mistake, it says, “Recalculating.” And then it tells me to make the soonest left turn and go back. I thought to myself I should write a book and call it “Recalculating” because I think that that’s what we’re doing all the time, that something happens, it challenges us and the challenge is, OK, so do you want to get mad now? You could get mad, you could go home, you could make some phone calls, you could tell a few people you can’t believe what this person said or that person said.
Indignation is tremendously seductive, you know, and to share with other people on the telephone and all that. So to not do it and to say, wait a minute, apropos of what you said before, wise effort to say to yourself, wait a minute, this is not the right road. Literally, this is not the right road. There’s a fork in the road here. I could become indignant; I could flame up this flame of negativity; or I could say, “Recalculating.” I’ll just go back here.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Delineating spirituality
A teacher of meditation, Boorstein says, “Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family even though you’ve had a long day– people often say to me, “I have so many things that take up my day. I don’t have time to take up a spiritual practice.”
ADVERTISEMENT
And the thing about being a parent who might think of themselves as a wise parent or a spiritual parent doesn’t take extra time. It’s enfolded into the act of parenting….I could have the most profound equanimity, and I am two words away from losing it completely when the phone rings, you pick up the phone, and a voice says, “Hello, Ma?”
And it doesn’t sound right…It’s clear to me that I am most proud of the fact that my children... I think, my most important work in my life.”