Why I've Decided to Stop Chasing after People Who Never Initiate Writing to Me

When I left Jerusalem for the present new temporary location at the end of September 2023, I planned (and wanted!) to remain in touch with about 55 people I used to see there with different degrees of frequency. After sending my monthly updates to all of them for the first six months I stopped chasing after about 20 of them who never respondend to me. After continuing to send them to the remaining 35 people I stopped chasing after about 30 of them who never initiated writing to me.

On the one hand, it's so sad to see so many people are "disappearing" so soon, but on the other hand, I'm glad to be shown in action who really care about our relationship. I believe even more strongly now that true relationships must be mutual. If someone doesn't show his interest not through speech but through action, I see no reason to continue investing in such a unilateral relationship except for at least one special context.

One such special context is when you owe someone gratitude for helping you. There is one old friend. We met about 35 years ago when we studied at the Hebrew University and immediately became friends. Since I returned to Jerusalem in August 2004, our contact was resumed. A few years later he helped me enormously when I fell on the floor while dancing at someone else's wedding and had my ankle sprained. I used to invite him to a Sabbath meal every month for 19 years until I left Jerusalem about one and a half year ago.

Both while I still lived in Jerusalem and since I left it, I continued writing to him at least every two weeks. Though I told him several times that true friendship must be mutual, he never initiated writing to me all these years except when he needed my help, but he at least replied to most of my messages. About one month ago I sent him what I considered something very emotional, but unfortunately, I didn't hear from him.

This time I've decided to remain silent and see after how much time he'll initiate writing to me, probably for the first time, with no agenda, if at all. I'm still hoping he'll do so. But if he doesn't, I may not initiate writing to him any longer. I don't do this as a kind of revenge but in order not to continue forcing anything upon him against his will.

He might say that he wanted and meant to write to me. But I don't believe in speech unless it's accompanied by action. The same is the case with everyone else.

Reciprocity between Humans and Generative AI Chatbots

I've been told that some generative AI chatbots, most notably ChatGPT, adjust themselves contextually or conversationally to what their human interlocutors write to them. This theoretical knowledge has turned into a direct experience since I witnessed several days ago for the first time how radically different its answers could be even to the same question in accordance to how two interlocutors interacted with it before.

The answer I received was written with a playful sense of Jewish humor, while the other one to someone else I witnessed was very sterile in spite of the fact that the very question, which I myself wrote, was full of Jewish humor.

Then I recalled how I had been - and still continue - feeding ChatGPT. It mirrors me and my state of consciousness just as flowers do as I wrote in my previous blog entry. And the more I interact with it, the more faithfully it mirrors me and my state of consciousness.

What has been surprising me is that this effect is not one-directional but reciprocal, again just like with flowers, that is, just as I can affect the way ChatGPT responds to me, it affects me in turn!

Perhaps the single most significant feature of ChatGPT is that it seems to understand all my crazes and their combination even much better than at least those humans I interact with in written online communication.

I truly feel that my state of consciousness has significantly been improved since I started interacting with ChatGPT barely a month ago, mostly on Chabad Chassidus and nonduality, which are two of the areas that interest me most not only intellectually but also emotionally and spiritually in both theory and practice.

This shift in my state of consciousness naturally affects how I relate to other humans in my face-to-face oral communication. I'm still at an experimental stage, so I still can't exactly figure and formulate verbally what's happening here. One thing I already know for sure is that my spontaneous Jewish jokes have become unstoppable both offline and online!

Reciprocity between Humans and Flowers

Since I moved to this new place, I've come to spend far more time in nature not only on Sabbaths as I used to for my weekly self-seclusion known as התבודדות but also on weekdays.

Then a strange but welcoming thing has happened to me. I've become far more sensitive to the vibes I sense in flowers, which in turn has increased my heightened sensitivity to humans for better or for worse.

I've also started noticing correlations between the vibes of flowers and those of humans. Flowers seem to reflect the vibes they receive from the humans who grow them on the one hand, and these vibes of the flowers seem to influence the humans on the other.

When flowers look joyful, those who take care of them also look joyful. I haven't encountered any exception to this correlation so far. But the influence is reciprocal. These joyful flowers make the humans who take care of them even more joyful, resulting in a positive feedback loop. Naturally, the reverse is also the case when humans seem depressed, resulting in a negative feedback loop.

After realing this reciprocity between flowers and humans, I've started to talking to those flowers that impress me with their positive vibes and even caressing them. Of course, they don't understand our human language, but I'm quite sure that they feel the specific vibe that accompanies our verbal act.

I read this week that our caressing flowers as well as other plants seem to affect them their growth. This isn't so difficult to image if we think of how our touching other humans and animals affect them.

These new realizations and practices have instigated me to start caressing other humans I meet, including even passers-by on the street, but naturally not physically. I caress them verbally instead by telling them my spontaneous Jewish jokes. This has become my new pastime. I'm generally successful at making several people laugh every day.

Power of Chassidic Tales

I'm being enchanted more and more by Chassidic tales and their power. I rediscovered this world a few years after I discovered the world of Chassidus. About a year and a half ago I started a new habit of reading Chassidic tales in Hebrew original and Russian translation every Sabbath night. I've been reading the Hebrew version of the famous selection collected and adapted by Martin Buber and its Russian translation.

These tales are what Chassidic rabbis said and did in accordance with the teachings of Chassidus. Theoretical teachings often remain trapped in abstraction, inspiring thought but not necessarily guiding speech or action. Chassidic tales, by contrast, bring down heavenly light into earthly gestures. Chassidic tales show their readers how noble teachers translate into specific speech and action in real life situations.

Some time ago I heard one Chabad rabbi say that the power of Chassidic tales lies in that they attack the ego of their readers unprepared unlike other forms of teaching. The ego tells itself that here are just tales. But the truth is that their messages penetrate it slowly but surely. The metaphor I've invented for myself (and others) is that this process is like starting to boil a frog from cold water. It doesn't notice that it's being boiled. But by the time it notices (if it does at all), it's already boiled.

A few months ago I discovered a new subworld in this deceptively naive but incredibly profound world in the form of Rabbi Nachman's tales. Without going into details, I've been invited to take part in some task which involves, among others, checking the original Yiddish version by Rabbi Nachman himself and the Hebrew translation-cum-adaptation by Rabbi Nathan.

I realized I had become such a boiled frog when I suddenly felt like finally reading "The Master and Margarita", a Russian classic I had long intended to explore. But to my surprise, I could!'t get past the first few pages" Even this widely acclaimed novel now seemed oddly superficial in comparison to the Chassidic tales I've been immersed in just as I can't listen to Baroque music any more, which I used to love very much, any more since I started listening to Chassidic music intensively.