I encountered recently two people facing two very different challenges.

Yet beneath the surface, they were wrestling with the same question: How do I remain calm, connected, and constructive when life becomes difficult?

The first was a father literally ranting with rage. I listened as he described how his town had failed his family. There were no pools, no basketball courts, no healthy outlets for his children.  As a result, they had become consumed by the internet.  He felt powerless to change it.

Underneath the blame what cried out was an abandonment of self.  

Blaming others, as Adam and Chava did just before being expelled from the Garden, is the opposite of yedidus.  It’s turning one’s back on our only real means to help ourselves: our agency. 

In declaring our victimhood, we are declaring before our own nefesh, “We are alone; those who can and should help are not here and won’t listen.” 

What’s the only consolation we offer the nefesh in our misery?  “It’s not our fault.”

That is a scary world to live in for any child, including our own nefesh.

The second man had been let down by someone he trusted financially.  When he revisited their written conversations, it became clear that promises had indeed been made. Yet because he disliked confrontation, his first instinct was to remain silent and carry the burden himself.

But he paused long enough to reconsider: “By not confronting him, am I being a peace lover, or a pushover?”

He saw that being quiet would actually have been a form of self-abandonment—not through blame, but through hiding. Hiding his needs. Hiding his disappointment. Hiding the truth in order to avoid discomfort.

He reviewed their WhatsApp dialogue and what each had committed to.  He wrote the partner, calmly affirming the facts and his needs while also affirming his care for the relationship. He stood up for himself without attacking. 

By acting with courage to address legitimate needs, he chose yedidus – inner connection.

It was uncomfortable – both the moment he sent the message and the moments right after.

“Maybe he’ll be angry with me?  Maybe I’m being aggressive?  Maybe I’m needlessly stoking conflict?” 
But he knew that wasn’t true. 

Not long after sending his reply, he described feeling a surge of inner peace.  There was an adult in his life.  His nefesh was not alone.  The neshama was leading with a quiet authority that could both protect and guide him.

These two stories reveal two different faces of the same challenge.

As we learned with Adam and Chava, sometimes we abandon ourselves through blame; sometimes through hiding.  Blame and hiding are the foundations of self-abandonment, of living in a world of disconnection.

One lashes outward. The other withdraws inward.

Neither is compatible with connection.

Are there places in our lives where we are perpetuating hiding or blaming?  We owe it to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to our Creator to seek a world of connection.
 
We never control circumstances—nor the behavior of others—but we always have the ability to respond to the legitimate needs of the nefesh for yedidus. We can listen to its distress.  We can ask it what it needs.  We can take small action or seek help. We can take responsibility for our own next step.

The opposite of abandonment is not control.

It is connection.

Connection to our own needs. Connection to reality. Connection to another person. And ultimately, connection to Hashem.

If you'd like to watch this idea on youtube, click HERE.

It is completely normal to want love and attention from others.

We need connection. We need to feel: I am not alone in life.

It's helpful to remember there is more than one domain of connection:

• inner connection — between my nefesh and my neshama.
• connection with others.
• connection with God.

They all support one another but Inner connection is the foundation.

So what happens when I try to connect to others without the foundation, ie when I am hiding, blaming others in my life or otherwise abandoning the nefesh?

I end up looking to another person to give me connection that he cannot.

That's where things begin to go wrong.

I may be giving, but underneath the giving there is an agenda:
"Give me the feeling that I'm not alone."

And when my interaction with another person is fundamentally about taking, my giving becomes controlling.  Yuk.

There's another side to this, too.

The alternative to controlling another person can be controlling access to yourself.

If I don't have that baseline warm, safe inner connection, I feel extraordinarily vulnerable.

And so I build a wall.  I don't allow people in.  I become unavailable.

Someone reaches toward me.  But I'm not willing to become vulnerable enough to reciprocate.  And people sense that: This guy isn't really available.

So without inner connection, we can end up in one of two unhealthy places.

Either I try to grab and take.

Or I'm too frightened to enter into genuine connection at all.

In one case, I control.  In the other case, I control indirectly by blocking access.

So what are we looking for?

I don't want to control you, and I don't want to be controlled by you.

I want to be responsible for my inner connection by showing up for my nefesh: no hiding, no blaming, no abandoning.

And then because there's an adult in the room, I can hold my needs alongside yours.

Sometimes I say yes to your needs - without resentment, without keeping score, without losing myself.  I don't see myself as sacrificing my needs.  I am simply fulfilling my need for healthy connection.

And also because there’s an adult in the room, there will be times when I say, “No, in this particular instance, I can't compromise."

Without apologies.  Without becoming defensive.  It’s a warm, clean, self-respecting no.

This is healthy connection.

I give without needing to control.

I receive without becoming controlled.

I am vulnerable without getting trampled.

I have boundaries without the Great Wall of China.

All of that becomes possible with the foundation of inner connection.

From that place, I simply meet another.

Person to person.

Soul to soul.

With warmth, self-respect, dignity and healthy desire to connect.

And with this we grow more and more richly in the experience of, “I'm not alone.”

If you'd like to watch this idea on youtube, click HERE.​

Our Sages make a surprising statement: the one thing in all of creation which G-d calls "very good" is the yetzer hara, aka our internal distortion factory.
 
How?

Simple: it's very good because it provides the resistance against which we create ourselves.  That is why we're here.

But there's an important caveat.  This gift is hard to redeem without Inner Connection.

Why?

Because without inner connection, the nefesh is alone.  With no adult in the room, the yetzer hara succeeds in projecting a startlingly compelling fear and shame.

Instead of serving as the backdrop for great choice, it becomes a terrifying lens through which I see myself and the world.  The voice within yells, “Run, hide, blame.”

Inner Connection changes that. With the adult in the room, the fear softens just enough to discover that the Creator is extending—through the distress—an invitation to grow.

That's when we have "very good" - the yetzer hara's resistance allowing us to become creators rather than merely creations.

For example: suppose I need to make an uncomfortable phone call, apply for a job, have a difficult conversation, or take a step that matters.

Immediately the distortion factory begins its work.

"You'll fail."
 
"People will judge you."

"You'll embarrass yourself."

"Better not risk it."

Now I have a choice.

Will I align with the distortion? Or will I turn toward the quiet clarity of my neshama?

Each time I choose truth over distortion, I am doing more than making a better decision.

I am becoming the cause of my life.

I am strengthening my connection to a G-dly way of seeing the world.

I am creating myself.

When the bond between the loving adult and the lovable child is weak, the child naturally reaches for the counterfeit security offered by the yetzer hara.

"Don't try."

"It's hopeless.”

“You won’t succeed.  Just grab whatever this moment’s pleasure is, no matter how destructive.”

There is comfort in those messages because they seem so certain.

But certainty is not necessarily reality.

As Inner Connection deepens, the child gradually gains the courage to say:

"Yes, I'm afraid. And I'm still going to make the phone call."

"Yes, I may fail. And I'm still going to put myself out there."

There is fear, but it feels different because he's no longer facing it alone.

Each encounter becomes another opportunity to choose truth over distortion, connection over isolation, courage over exemption.

And in making those choices, we become what we were created to be:

The cause of our own goodness.