The Struggle

The other day at lunch, my friends were discussing the Biblical story of Jacob. The Hebrew meaning of the name Jacob refers to the ankle of his twin that he clutched when he was born. After wrestling with an angel, (although it is sometimes looked at metaphorically as part of Jacob himself), his name was changed to Yisroel, or Israel. This name refers directly to wrestling with G-d. He was given the name because he "prevailed."

I was struck by this story because of its daily and life implications. We are so often clutching at something other than ourselves, something often relatively meaningless to others, and yet it is there that we base our lives (or our names). Only through struggling may we prevail and free ourselves from the clutches of our conscious or inadvertent surroundings.

My client is going on a trip she's been excitedly anticipating for over a year. In our phone consultation today we reviewed the pending file. She unearthed a threatening Verizon bill that she had already dealt with once, but their administration seemed to have no recollection of this.

"Oh, noooo!" she moaned, "I don't want to deal with this again!"

However, she does want to have a wonderful vacation with her husband now that she's dug herself out from the piles of paperwork she once had. We spent an hour clearing her desk, prioritizing, making a to-do list, a file pile, opening and separating the mail, recycling, shredding, and reviewing what needed to be done for her to stroll calmly onto the plane on this end and into a bathing suit on the other side. When we got ready to end our appointment, she took some deep breaths and prepared to call Verizon straightaway.

Sometimes the struggle is an annoying administrative blunder that really has nothing to do with you that you might have already dealt with repeatedly. Sometimes it's that your friends are suffering, sometimes it's a struggle even to determine just why you're struggling so.

These things don't go away, and they follow us onto planes to faraway places and ruin our vacations and our health.

Let's wrestle with them. We can prevail.