Which Personal Exodus This Year?

In each and every generation a person must view himself as though he personally left Egypt. - Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 116b

I constantly get out of my comfort zone. Once you push yourself into something new, a whole new world of opportunities opens up. But you might get hurt. But amazingly when you heal, you are somewhere you've never been. - Terry Crews

At least in the past 20 years or so I've always asked myself every year before the Passover what bondage I'd like to be liberated from. In some years it was internal, and in others it was external.

I also asked myself for the first time this year what other types of bondage, whether internal and external, I made a resolution to escape from in these 20 years. I could identify at least three internal and four external types of bondage. And to my surprise and joy, I've escapted from all of them except for the current one.

The past ones include freedom from being unmarried to getting married, from being a part-time lecturer to getting a tenure-track position and then getting tenured, to name just a few.

In the past few years I prepared myself for escape from the rat race in academia. This successful personal exodus has brought me into new internal bondage, and it's this new internal bondage from which I'd like to be liberated this coming year. It's financial instability and uncertainty as a newly self-employed life coach.

I try to encourage myself by saying that I had to struggle with more formidable challenges but eventually got over all of them though I felt like giving up these challenges many times when I was in their midst.

But on the other hand, it's against my nature to remain stuck in the comfort zone for a long time, which for me can even mean intellectual and spiritual necrosis. Not only when things get unbearable but also when they get too comfortable, I have to initiate an exodus.

(Non-academic) Writer's Block

The single biggest challenge I faced when I still worked in academia was writing papers-shmapers, or to be more precise, the so-called writer's block. The most extreme example is the writer's block I felt against my PhD dissertation. The actual process of writing it took me only about half a year, but I had to spend about ten (!) years to start writing it.

So when I decided to leave academia, I thought - naively in restrospect - that I would finally be freed from this mental challenge. When I started blogging on various aspects of my new occupation - Jewish life coaching- and its foundation - teachings of Chabad Hasidism - about two and a half years ago, I felt as if I had become a writing tool of something bigger than myself. Words simply came out of nowhere, and all I had to do was to write down these flowing words.

But quite unexpectedly, I started to experience non-academic writer's block when I started to work with a personal business coach and write writing assignments, which I can apply immediately to my new business. This new challenge became blown out of proportion. I spent three full work days sitting in front of my computer and not writing even a single word. So I've understood that my writer's block has nothing to do with academia.

I tried one trick that usually worked to cope with this challenge when I had to finish writing an academic paper - getting up at 3:30 instead of 5:00 in the morning. These extra 90 minutes often turned out to be far more productive than eight hours in the middle of the work day, and I could get more things done in these 90 minutes.

This old trick did work with my new non-academic writer's block, too. But it's the last resort. I can't get up at 3:30 every (weekday) morning. And even if I should, I would then lose the freshness of these extra 9o minutes and they will become just like other normal hours of my work day.

In the meanwhile I haven't come up with other, more realistic, solutions I can use on a regular basis.

Cognitive Intelligence vs. Life Wisdom

What are the characteristics of the rat race?

• An inordinate emphasis on external matters - good looks, wealth, power, popularity, fame.
• A profound feeling that life is a great competition, that we must not allow ourselves to fall behind.
• An acceptance of standards set by others; a drive toward conformity even at the rist of betraying our freedom to make responsible choices.
• [...]
• A realization at some point and on some level that the rat race is ultimately meaningless. What have I achieved by "winning"? Has "success" brought me real happiness?

- Rabbi Mark Angel (Losing the Rat Race, Winning at Life)

I think I can see clearly by now why I've completely lost my interest in academia and decided to leave it. Even if you start your academic career with pure love of study, you'll find yourself sooner or later forced to join the rat race. Some people might also realize that the seemingly paradoxical but best way of winning at life is by losing the rat race. Nevertheless not many people dare to actually leave their rat race. I had to experience the so-called dark night of the soul to take the courage to leave my rat race in academia.

I would characterize competition in academia as that for cognitive intelligence. I've also come to realize that high cognitive intelligence is not the most important type of intelligence for true success in life - accomplishing our spiritual mission in our respective physical body in this world. What is far more important for this purpose is to cultivate our spiritual intelligence, or life wisdom to use a simple expression.

We have the following four types of people in terms of the combination of cognitive intelligence and life wisdom:

1. Unintelligent and unwise people
2. Unintelligent but wise people
3. Intelligent but unwise people
4. Intelligent and wise people

The ideal type would be the fourth. But if I'm asked whichi I prefer, the second or the third, I wouldn't hesitate now that I'd prefer the second. And the third is even worse than the first in a sense.

Of course, I'm not saying that there aren't many intelligent people in academia who are also wise. I've met enough, and I still wonder how they could find time and energy to cultivate their life wisdom in their hective academic schedule.

By continuing your academic rat race you run the risk of equating "success" in the competition for cognitive intelligence, especially in the form of the number of cited articles in peer-reviewed journals, with your life purpose.

It was only I started to experience my own share of the dark night of the sould that I could stop to think for the first time in my academic life what I had been doing for all those years. It didn't take me long to conclude that this competition is absolutely meaningless for me and I'd prefer spending my precious time and energy for increasing my life wisdom.

I've been extremely lucky to have encountered Chabad Chassidus for this purpose. I've been learning, both directly through formal and private study and indirectly by observing Chabad rabbis, how to use intellect to cultivate spiritual intelligence. Having been immpersed in such an environment for about three years by now, I simply can't read most academic studies of Judaism, which are fundementally different in their approach and aftereffects from traditional study of the Torah in general and Chabad Chassidus in particular.