Breaking through Our Loops - Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser

want you to imagine that someone calls you from Hollywood head of Sony Pictures calls you and we've been studying different lives of people in ramont B chish and we decided to make a movie about your life can we FedEx you the contract like before you do can you just tell me what the movie is about I never thought my life was that interesting what he does is he goes into the story of your childhood and a couple of difficult moments that took place then where you're kind of wondering how do you know about that you know whether it was not getting picked for the play or not getting picked for the team or whatever your story was all of us have stories so he tells you the story and you're like yeah then what you're like no this is the best part is you grew up and now you're an adult and you're still playing out the same story in all your adult interactions with your spouse and with your kids and with all your neighbors and your friends like the same drama just keeps coming up over and over and over again you're like in this amazing rerun of your childhood at which point you say on the phone like please don't send the contract you know and he's like no this is amazing everyone wants to watch this stuff I mean what is every movie made of first they make you fall in love with the character cuz they give you all the best angles with the cameras and they play the violins and then something goes wrong why would you sit there for another 2 hours says the producer to you know what's going to happen in this movie they're going to play out the same story in all their interactions all their relationships as an adult why are you going to sit there for that and the answer is cuz you want to see a breakthrough everyone's going to watch it cuz they want to see you finally break through your story because everyone's living in their story and everyone's doing reruns in their adult lives and in that story there is no possibility all your interactions get very very predictable you know where you're going with this they know where you're going with this everybody knows where this is going when you're in your story I want to broaden our definition of responsibility when we were raised responsibility was cleaning up your room brushing your tea eating all the carrots and peas on your plate it broadened there became more responsibility as we got older and then of course as adults we're expected to take responsibility fiscally financially for ourselves for our families what I'd like to do is broaden it further responsibility for your stories to the point where you can actually step out the loop look at yourself in your story and suddenly take responsibility for it this is a new record in responsibility taking but wow what a difference life is can we always do that no but we can do it most of the time [Music]