Dear Readers,
I want to share with you an incident that was eye opening for several reasons.
A week ago, I was trying to park my car in Brooklyn, not an easy thing to do. I was lucky to find a spot between two driveways, however, I wasn’t sure if I was clear on both sides. There was a man standing outside, so I asked him what he thought. He responded by saying he doesn’t live on the block. I said, “You really don’t have to live here to tell me if I am blocking a driveway.” He was a middle-aged person who spoke English well and appeared to be doing some construction work. He begrudgingly told me to move my car up a little. After I got out of my car he said, “You are Jewish, aren’t you?” I replied in the affirmative. He then said in a most anti-Semitic tone, “I can’t believe that I helped a Jew.”
I thought carefully about what to respond. On the one hand, his tone and words were very disrespectful and anti-Semitic and made me want to answer him in a tough manner. On the other hand, I was shocked and hurt and wanted this man to see that Jews are good people.
I said, “May G-d bless you and may you have good health, wealth, and happiness.” I continued to thank him for helping me and his demeanor and body language completely changed. The man actually smiled at me and said, “Boy lady, you are really nice.” I then wished him that he should always have the best life has to offer. The transformation was amazing. He asked me if I needed any more help and I said that I was fine. He could not stop smiling and I knew that I had passed this test.
This whole situation made such an impact on me. I could not believe that my response had changed the situation so drastically. Although I always talk about countermoves and believe in their effectiveness, I still could not believe how effective this was.
Countermoves are how you react to a person. Essentially it is the “moves” that you make in response to someone else’s actions. If someone is screaming at you and you respond in kind, there will likely be a big fight. However, if you continue to respond calmly, the situation may de-escalate.
This idea is very helpful with all relationships, especially in a relationship with a difficult person. The reality is that we will not be able to change him or her, however, if you change how you react to this person, you will likely begin to see a change in your relationship. Countermoves effectively change the reaction of the difficult person because he/she has no one to fight with.
For example, a critical mother-in-law often gets a response of defensiveness or sadness. However, if the daughter-in-law learns to change her reaction and validates the criticism in a positive way, the mother-in-law will likely not know how to respond. The daughter-in-law can validate the criticism by telling her mother-in-law that she is correct and then say something like, “You are right that I love to shop. Baruch Hashem, I look for things on sale and dress my family beautifully doing so!” In this way, she is validating her mother-in-law’s words while slanting it into a positive thing about herself. In most cases, this will leave the mother-in-law at a loss for words and the entire fight or insult will be lost.
Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, had a mailman who was very anti-Semitic and used to throw the mail in his face every day. Rav Moshe would always thank the mailman for delivering the mail. Once a talmid asked Rav Moshe why he was so nice to him. Rav Moshe responded, “I try to be on a higher level.”
My husband, Dr. Mark Respler, was a resident at Beth Israel Hospital years ago. Every day when he came into the hospital he greeted the security guard warmly and wished him a great day. One day the guard said to my husband, “You know doctor, you are the only doctor who greets me every day so nicely. Everyone else ignores me and you always wear that beanie on your head. You are a really nice person.” How many times do we miss opportunities to make a kiddush Hashem? Yes, we are facing anti-Semitism and negativity. However, with our positive attitudes we can change things. This is true in our own homes as well. If we have a positive attitude it will help everyone around us.
This positive attitude applies to how we treat people in our own life. I love this quote from Vienna Pharaon, “You cannot change someone else. What you change is how you relate to them not changing.”
Therefore, if you are in a situation where you are trying to make changes, but the person that you are married to or the child that is already an adult does not want to change, you can only work on yourself.
Hatzlocha.
