The Fake Tip of the Iceberg

Insight of the Week

n Parashat Va'et'hanan, Moshe Rabbenu recalls the event of Ma'amad Har Sinai , when Hashem spoke to Beneh Yisrael at Mount Sinai, and pronounced the Aseret Ha'dibberot (Ten Commandments). The final of these ten commands is לא תחמוד – "You shall not covet." This mitzvah forbids us from wanting what our fellow has and trying to obtain it. Let us, then, take a moment to talk about jealousy, particularly in today's day and age. There has never been a generation that saw so many pictures as our generation. And the vast majority of these pictures are fake, or give a fake impression. One Rabbi compared this phenomenon to artificial grass. Every "blade" is the perfect size, and the perfect color. Real grass, however, is never perfectly green, and never the perfect size. People today are like artificial grass. They project an image of perfection. They want everybody to see them as having the perfect life. We all, to one extent or another, "photoshop" our lives, both on social media and in real-life interactions. We make it seem like our marriage is perfect, our kids are perfect, our home is perfect, our portfolio is perfect, and our mental health is perfect. But we know the truth – that our lives aren't perfect, that we have our share of problems and struggles, that things aren't exactly the way we want them to be. We know that we're just putting on a show. And if we're putting on a show, that means that the people we're jealous of are also putting on a show. They make their lives look perfect just like we do – but the truth is that their lives aren't so perfect, just like ours isn't so perfect. This is true also about the way we tend to judge other people. We see people act a certain way, and we reach conclusions about them, as though we know the whole story. I was once giving a talk, and ten minutes into the talk, three women in the audience stood up and left. In my mind, as I was speaking, I thought to myself that they left because the introduction to this talk was the same as the introduction to a speech I had given around a month before, and these women heard that speech online, and thus assumed that I was giving the same talk now. I then realized that I had just done something very silly. I concocted an entire story about three people whom I know absolutely nothing about. I didn't have any idea who these women were, what they were doing there and why they left, but I created a narrative in my mind about them. And we do this so often. We see only the "tip of the iceberg" of a person's life, and then decide that we know all about the "iceberg," we know everything about the person, why he does what he does. And then we feel we can criticize him and look down on him. Not only do we see only the "tip of the iceberg," but even that "tip" which we see is fake. What we see isn't real. Why do we think we can judge other people, and why do we feel jealous of other people, if we know so little, if anything, about their lives? One Rabbi taught: "Judging favorably is the worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario is – it's none of your business." We have our lives, other people have their lives; they don't know about our lives, and we don't know about their lives. So there's no reason to feel jealous, and there's no reason to judge.