Friends

There is a Jewish teaching which offers a famous piece of advice "Get yourself a friend". It's a word that conjures up a warm feeling "friend". It's someone who'll be there when you need them. Someone who'll share your worries and concerns. Someone to be on your side, who'll comfort you when you upset or depressed. But there's one area where they might let you down......telling you when your wrong or what your faults are. They don't want to upset you. They don't want to jeopardise the relationship and anyway nobody's perfect they'll have faults themselves which they'd rather you didn't point out to them.

King David said in the Psalms "When my enemies arise against me, I lend my ears to their comments" David would be able to hear things about himself from his enemies, which he would never hear from his friends. He's saying that you should convert destructive criticism, into constructive criticism.

I know a very famous Rabbi who is an equally famous Psychiatrist. He specialises in helping people, give up alcohol or drug addictions. He told me once that he received a phone call from an extremely distressed woman. He had helped her to give up Alcoholism and she had been sober for nearly a year. Despite this, her husband continued to criticise her for being inadequate as a wife and a failure as a mother. After calming the woman down he commented that he had always been disturbed by the scar across her face. After a few moments of stunned silence the woman replied,

" Pardon, what did you say?"

The Rabbi replied " You heard me correctly, the scar across your face is ugly."

"I don't understand you" she said " There is no scar on my face"

"Then how did you react when I said what I did?"

" I just didn't understand you" she replied.

"You see" said the Rabbi "When I said something which you knew to be untrue you were merely perplexed. As you know your husbands criticisms are also untrue, then his comments shouldn't effect you at all. His comments hurt you because not too long ago, they were true. Back then you realised that and those comments started you on the road to recovery. The truth is you don't need my help anymore...but maybe your husband should make an appointment to see me."

And that Jewish teaching "Get yourself a friend" continues "And get yourself a Rabbi." In this sense a Rabbi could be someone a wee bit older and wiser. Someone who won't avoid telling you if you've made a mistake and who might help you to take a destructive criticism and turn it into a constructive one.

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