Changing Means of Electronic Communication

Of all the main means of electronic communication available to us, including email, cellphone, SMS, WhatsApp, and Messenger, to name just a few, I prefer email to all the others, at least for non-intimate topics, simply because it's asynchronic, thus less intrusive.

When I started using email in 1994, few of my friends and colleages used it. What few people I could communicate then either privately or through mailing lists were mostly computer geeks or early adoptors. Paradoxically, the more people started using email with the popularization of the Internet, the less meaningful communication I've come to have both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Unfortunately, email seems to have passed its heyday as a means of electronic communication. More and more of those I used to communicate with mainly by email seem to have less and less patience to continue to communicate by email. Even if they answer me by email, their answers are much shorter now. And many people don't seem to be ready to continue communicating after sending me a couple of "telegrams". More and more of the questions I send in an attempt to deepen our online communication remain unanswered.

Those I communicate with electronically on a regular basis can be classified into four groups by their native language, which seems to reflect cultural differences in communication: Hebrew, English, Russian, and Japanese. The order of these four languages is also the ascending order of patience for electronic communication by email.

One of the main reasons why I have few chances to communicate electronically in Hebrew is that I prefer email, while many native speakers of Hebrew seem to prefer anything other than email. I must be one of the few people in Israel who still don't use a smartphone, but I still hesitate to buy what I define as an electronic paficier mainly because having a smartphone won't increase chances of my having meaningful electronic communication. I'm afraid I'll end up being inundated instead with the flood of "telegrams" that may mean little or nothing to me.

Anger and Its Outbursts

"Our darkest times often give birth to our most lush and transformative growth." - Alan Wolfelt

I used to both get angry and burst out with anger very easily. My anger and its outbursts were intensified when I drank alcohol though I did so partly to soothe my anger and prevent its outbursts. It was not until my fatal anger outburst under the influence of alcohol cost me a heavy "price" about two years ago that I decided to stop drinking once and for all - since then I've been breaking my personal record of sobriety every day - and start doing something serious to tame my anger.

The single most important thing that has helped me in this effort seems to be my daily practice of mindfulness. Not only did I come to burst out with anger less and less but also did I come to get angry in the first place less and less. Of course, I can't say I never get angry, but this happens very rarely now, and even when it happens, I can remain mindful of my anger, which seldom translates into angry speech and action. I've even stopped feeling as stress what used to be stress for me and caused my anger.

Recently, however, I've started thinking that this change of mine might be not only thanks to my daily practice of mindfulness but also because with my career change I don't have to cope with what used to be the main source of my stress. So I'm just curious how I would manage in the same circumstance with this altered state of my consciousness. Fortunately or unfortunately, this experient will remain a theoretical one.

In the meanwhile this altered state of my consciousness has come to cause me another type of stress though it doesn't cause anger in turn. I'm torn - thus feel frustrated - between two opposites: on the one hand, I feel like sharing with three groups of people in all of which I myself used to be a member some materials for thought so that they may reexamine what seems to me now the unwritten dogma of the collective ego of each of these three groups, but on the other hand, I fear that many of them simply hate me if I should dare to do so, especially publicly in an explicit manner. I should probably get rid of such desire of mine that borders on judgementalism, for as I see them now from outside, so to speak, many of them seem too deeply trapped in their respective dogmas.

Effects of the Continued Study of Chabad Hasidism

As I continue my formal and informal study of Chabad Hasidism into the second year, I've started to not only feel but also witness its effects upon myself and my relationships with other people and the world.

For my admiration and enthusiasm for the Tanya - a Chabad classic that can be defined as the ultimate Jewish self-help book - and its author who is also the founder of Chabad I made a historic shift last week in my prayer rite (נוסח) from the Ashkenazic rite to the Lurianic rite codifined by the author of Tanya, also changing the direction of tying the knot of tefillin according to Chabad. I've also started to learn the siddur systematically for the first time with commentaries by the founder of Chabad itself and two of its prominent contemporary rabbis. My daily experience of davening has significantly been changed since this historic shift. I feel, among others, better aligned spiritually now. My interest in Tanya has also lead me to take an interest in other works by its author, including his commentaries of the Five Books of Moses.

My relationships with other people and the world couldn't remain unaffected. Actually, I started witnessing this effect quite a long time ago, but I'm more conscious of it. Having been exposed to the depth and breath of the teachings of Chabad Hasidism, which concerns itself especially with the inner dimension of the Torah and our soul, many areas of intellectual pursuits that used to occupy me for years have completely lost their intellectual appeal for me, to say nothing of their spiritual appeal. These areas include linguistics, academic Jewish studies, Yiddishism, and Esperantism, all of which look so shallow and inessential to me now.

Unfortunately, what enthuses me now seems to interest few of my former colleagues and friends from my pre-Hasidic period. Conversely, what seems to interest them inevitably doesn't interest me in many cases. I've already noticed two dangerous tendencies of my egoic mind emerging - judgementality and desire to educate other people. Partly thanks to my practice of mindfulness and the teachings of Chabad Hasidism per se, these two negative forces of my egoic mind remain mostly as thoughts and seldom manifest themselves explicitly in speech and action. I have a few ideas about how to get rid of them or at least tame them, but it's still too early to decide how effective they are.