What If the Problem Isn’t the Problem? A New Way to Heal Relationships

One of the biggest challenges I see couples face in marriage, and by the way, if you're not married or you are married and have a great marriage already, what I'm about to say can apply to your parenting, can apply to dealing with employees, employers. This can probably be relevant to almost any human interaction. And one of the issues I see with couples is that they face issues. They face disagreements. They face deep disrespect toward one another. which happens, but they get intimidated by it. And they're so intimidated by the issue they're fixing, they forget about the non-issue that they're fixing. And they believe that they can't move forward to the good parts of their life until they get rid of the bad parts of their life. Not realizing that if they focused more on what is working in the relationship, there would be less problems in the relationship. For example, we notice when our spouse isn't happy with us. We notice when our children are going through a difficult time. We notice when our employee or our employer and we say what what's wrong, right? Inevitably, you meet people and you say, "Hey, what's wrong? You don't look like yourself. What's going on?" When somebody's happy, when somebody's smiling, when somebody is being their best selves, what if we were to notice that and say, "Hey, why are you happy? Let me learn more about it so you can do more of it. What is it about me? You don't have to ask this. You could think this. What is about me that creates an environment where you might be happy or you might be willing to share this happiness. If we were a little bit more comfortable and less fearful being positive, there'd be less space for negativity in our lives. And you see this message, by the way, in the Passover Hagada. In the Hagada, we talk about the four children. We talk about the wise child's questions, the wicked child's questions, the one who doesn't know what to ask, the simple child. And the wicked, quote unquote, wicked child has a cynical question, a skeptical question. And our response to him is hake es shinov. We're supposed to blunt his teeth. And many of the commentaries ask how is that an appropriate response? How is that effective? This child sitting at the seder. He's obviously might not want to be there to some degree. He's asking skeptical questions and you don't like the question and you hit him. How is that going to what's that going to accomplish? So the way the commentaries explain it is that the Hebrew word hake es shav means to not hit his teeth but blunt his teeth. Expose shinav. The word shinav doesn't have to mean teeth. It can mean the the letter shin. Expose his shin. The Hebrew letter shin. What is the Hebrew letter shin? Well, we're talking to the Russia to the quote unquote wicked child. And the word Russia has three letters. shiny. And if you expose the shin, you'll see that you're left with rein with something that's bad. But within the rah, within the bad, you found something good. You found something redeemable. What does that shin represent? I don't know. Find out. Find out how it's redeemable. Maybe it stands for sim. Maybe it stands for for talk. Maybe it stands for something. There's something redeemable within that negative experience. And if you were to focus not on the negative experience on the but on the shin that's in the on the shin that's in the bad. There's something redeemable in the bad. The bad itself goes away. When we focus on the light that's there, the darkness dissipates. It's not masking, ignoring, or neglecting the dark. But this is a very different way of doing it. Very effective, very efficient. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.