Dual Lives

It seems like many people lead dual lives; A person can work at a job from 9-5, spending countless hours on the minutiae of tax law and accounting, and then, during the rest of their lives, be just another normal human being. It seems people have this tendency to compartmentalize themselves that way; There may be dozens of lives tucked into a person's year; The working life, the home life, the bais medrash life, the parent life, the sports fan life, and so on.

More than this, each of these lives can be lead in a completely different fashion. There is the efficient and hardworking edition, the excited and energized edition, the calm and relaxed edition, and even, though we may not like to admit it, the angry and irritated edition, or the moody and unreasonable edition.

It seems strange that a person can lead so many parallel lives, going from day to day, with the illusion that there's only one person underneath. It is not so much a lie as it is confusion, an inability to recognize that the person who stepped out of the stuffy, busy office and into the car, with one arm out of the window, listening to the radio; each one may not really be the same person.

This tendency to split our lives up makes it easier to deal with the way we act. It is unacceptable to act without middos and care at all times. While at home. Honesty and integrity are keystones of our life. Our family life. A comprehensive knowledge of the topics involved is the best way to approach a subject. In the Gemara.

There is at Derech Etz Chaim, I have noticed, a big push for what the torah calls "Tam". The prototype of this idea is Yaakov; "Yaakov Ish Tam." This is translated in the Stone Chumash as "Yaakov was a wholesome man", but this does not expalin the idea, quite the opposite; the dictionary I have defines wholesome as "healthful", like a wholesome breakfast. Tam means simple; not as we normally might use to describe a person, but rather simple as we would describe a machine, meaning without anything extraneous. In this sense, we mean the pieces of a person's life should be integrated.

This week, Derech Etz Chaim went on a tiyul with some of the rebbeim. It was a new set of experiences for many, but I think that more than that, what impressed me was the similarity between the rebbeim's different lives. Not the difference between Rav Aharon's life and Rav Mendel's life, but the similarilty between Rav Aharon giving a shiur and Rav Aharon leading a hike, or the similarity between Rav Mendel in the Bais Midrash and Rav Mendel banana boating. They may dress differently, but the tiyul let us see that they lead the same life.