The other day I read something interesting: According to Jewish teaching, two types of “good” exist. There is objective good and subjective good.

When we desire good things and long for good things and try to manifest good things in our life–or things we perceive or judge as “good,” fall into the category of subjective good. Our human concept of good is subjective; we are limited in how we see things and we can’t see into the future to know if the things we want are actually good for us. In fact, many of the things we want aren’t good for us. That’s why in the Jewish tradition when we wish for something or try to manifest something “good” in our life we qualify our prayer with the words “for the good” or “l’tovah.” The prayer often said is: May God fulfill all desires of my/your heart for the good.” This refers to the objective good.

What is the objective good? This is what is actually good for us, and only God can know this. Possibly our soul knows this as well. We don’t know what is good for us–at least not often.

While we long for a “good” life, health, job, relationship, finances, car, etc., sometimes these things and conditions lead us down paths that don’t benefit us. We become jaded with wealth and turn to alcohol or drugs or success causes us to become corrupt in our business dealings. Good relationships or an easy life may cause us to forget to appreciate what we have and to take advantage of those we love or for get to care for what we have. On the other hand, sometimes misfortune and a difficult live consisting of what we subjectively deem “bad” causes us to advance, grow, become strong, persevere, appreciate things more, become wiser, become a more giving person, and ultimately achieve more success and happiness.

When we don’t receive the good we want in our lives, when we don’t manifest what we want and think is best for us, maybe it is for our own “good.” Maybe God, or some higher power, knows better and is preventing us from having what we want. Consider that when you think your creative visualizations, the Law of Attraction, deliberate creation, your prayers, or some other technique you are using to manifest good in your life doesn’t seem to be working.

Everyone’s talking about U2 front man Bono, who was saved from possible paralysis by emergency back surgery this past Friday. His rehab program requires an eight week recuperation necessitating postponing the North American leg of the band’s U2 360 Tour and canceling next month’s Glastonbury, England, appearance.

What happens to you when you have a setback like Bono? Do you let it get you down? Does your energy become negative, causing a downward spiral? Do you let “bad” events become free falls or do you work to make them chances to rise up to new heights?

Rabbi Nachum Ish Gam, one of our Talmudic rabbis, might have responded to such an event by saying, “Gam zu l’tovah. This also is for good.” This is one of my favorite sayings and teachings from Judaism. However, some people have a hard time seeing an injury or other “negative” event as “for the good.”

I’ve recently learned that Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, my Jewish life coach, discussed these types of “negative” occurrences in our lives as “falls and rises.” He said falls were inevitable and even necessary for the next rise to happen. While we may not find it possible to avoid a fall—just like Bono might not have been able to avoid the injury that caused him to need surgery, we can decide how low we fall and how we transform it into a new rise. Seeing a setback in this light then becomes not an obstacle but an opportunity.

Of course, we might simply allow ourselves to become negative and depressed and fall lower and lower, deeper and deeper until, as they say, we hit rock bottom. At that point, we likely will begin to rise back up anyway. We can avoid this scenario, though, by consciously choosing to see what has happened to us as an opportunity to use our mind—our thoughts—to create a positive situation. Gam zu l’tovah. We make the situation work for us with positive thinking. This creates positive energy that helps us begin climbing upward, creating a rise that hopefully brings us to a higher peak than before.

I can imagine that all the people who didn’t bother to get tickets to U2’s upcoming concerts might actually run out to buy tickets…or that after Bono’s recuperation the band could add shows and make more money because of the publicity Bono’s surgery provided—a rise out of a fall. In any event, the band is getting lots of publicity. This could be construed as “for the good,” no? At least these thoughts generate more positive energy than just focusing on money and time lost.

We need to learn not to fight against what happens to us. You can see this as paddling upstream or fighting the rapids when white water rafting. Instead, you want to go with the flow or paddle with the current. That doesn’t mean that when something bad happens you want to to see that event as a path of negativity to follow downward. That can actually feel easier sometimes. Instead, see it as one patch of white water to maneuver through, one current that sets you spinning for a moment. Then you guide your raft toward the current that allows you to flow freely and easily down the river of positivity.

Or see this like mountain climbing. You might slip and loose your footing, sliding downward a bit only to be caught by your belay. The rope stops you from continuing your fall. The fall represents just one moment, one event, during the whole climb. Then you gather your energy and begin your upward climb once again continuing until you reach the top of the mountain.

Seeing our lives as falls and rises, learning to say, “This too is for the good,” allows us to reach our goals, to achieve our full potential and to pursue personal growth on all levels. It helps us make the best of any situation, and that helps us live our lives with more acceptance–and peace.

I’ve written several posts lately on similar topics. There were great comments, which I learned a lot from (some of which I shared here), that you can read here.

Lots of human potential and personal growth experts will tell you that everything happens for a reason. I often say the same thing. This means there must be some good in every event.

This teaching can also be found in Judaism. In fact, we have a famous saying that comes from one of our Talmudic rabbis,  Rabbi Nachum Ish Gamzu. Many Jews have heard it: Gam zu l’tovah. This also is for good. This is one of my favorite sayings and teachings from Judaism.

The Gamara, which is part of the Talmud (a central text of mainstream Judaism), explains that Rabbi Nachum’s nickname came from the fact that his reaction to anything that happened to him was always, “Gam zu l’tovah,” or “And that is also for the good.”

What’s the lesson we can learn from Rabbi Nachum and his saying? We can learn that, indeed, everything that happens is “for the good.” Yes…even the “bad stuff.”

Today, think about what happens to you in a positive manner–even if initially it doesn’t look like it is “for the good.” Or simply accept what happens knowing that at some point you’ll understand why the experience was “for the good.”

You don’t have to understand why something is “for the good” right this moment. Just know that it is. One day, you’ll understand. That’s why we say “hindsight is 20-20.”

I know some people are going to jump up and down and yell, “But the earthquake in Haiti couldn’t have been for the good! 9-11 couldn’t have been for the good! The Holocaust couldn’t have been for the good!”

We also don’t always see the reasons; God has better vision than we do. I do think, however, a reason exists. I have faith. I trust. I agree with Rabbi Nachum.

And you know what? Believing that on some level–even a level I may not understand–everything is for the good makes it easier to deal with disasters and tragedies. It doesn’t make them less horrible; it makes them easier to accept.

I suggest you read a bit more about Rabbi Nachum’s views on this here.

And try his words out. You might find you them.

After five weeks of my son’s unexplained illness, two hospital stays, a zillion blood tests, one MRI, two ultrasounds (and one more on Monday), one echocardiogram, one EKG, a dose of IVIG, three X-rays, and two many examinations to count by numerous doctors, my sons STILL UNEXPLAINED illness seems to be disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived. The every-day fevers are gone. The bloodshot, conjunctivitis eyes are almost white again. The hip pain that moved to his knees, causing him to be unable to stand for more than a minute, has disappeared leaving just a small pain and a little fluid in his knees and ankles.  His color is coming back, and he’s left only with slight anemia, a moderately enlarged spleen (that we hope we’ll discover on Monday has returned to its normal size), and a lack of endurance. Well, after such a long illness, it’s no wonder. (He did get a stomach virus that set him back two days as well…)

For a dancer wanting to do a week long dance intensive and then audition for a dance company and be involved in choreography for a whole week — and to do this just seven days from now, no endurance presents a problem. As does lack of muscle tone and generally being out of shape. And his whole year of dance depends upon the audition and choreography sessions. The intensive, while less important, is something he’s been looking forward to for months.

In any case, we are grateful for the fact that he seems, at long last, to be returning to health. But a weekend spent in the hospital so that the best doctors around could figure out what was wrong with us left us with no clear-cut answers. That remains a source of frustration. We are also frustrated by the fact that this illness caused him to miss more than half of his summer camp stay, something he loves and looks forward to almost as much as his dancing. And now it has put his participation in this intensive and his year of dance at risk as well. Not to mention that he also missed a bar mitzvah/reunion with all his camp friends…That leaves us wondering why this occurred? What was the good in this illness?

If I believe, which I firmly do, that God has a hand in everything and that everything is for the good, there must be something to learn from this experience? As hard as I have searched, I’ve found nothing, not one ounce of good.

Which leads me to the conclusion that when we can find no lesson in the “bad” events of our lives, the only thing we can do is find a place of gratitude. And that I can do.

I can feel grateful for Julian’s returning health.

I can feel grateful for the fact that he wasn’t one of the other children on 3E, the surgical wing at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital where we happened to get a bed, who had had surgery. My husband came to me in tears after seeing a child that had just had open heart surgery; he didn’t yet know that Julian’s heart was okay, since he’d left the hospital the night before after Julian had been given a dose of IVIG, a course of human antibodies, when we thought he had some irregularities in the arteries to his heart possibly caused by having Kawasaki’s Disease. (We aren’t sure he really had that, and the doctors told me the next morning that his heart was perfectly healthy — before my husband arrived back at the hospital.) We cried together in gratitude that Julian’s heart was healthy and that wasn’t him with his chest cut open and stitched back up.

I can feel grateful that Julian is alive. I walked yesterday with my neighbor whose son committed suicide a year ago. And I watched a movie last night about a mother dealing with the death of her daughter.  I can feel grateful my daughter is alive as well. And my husband.

Julian can be grateful each time he dances, because there were moments when we thought he might not dance again of for a long time…like when they thought he might have juvenile arthritis or a heart condition.

I can be grateful for my husband’s job and the insurance it provides that allowed us to go to the hospital for three nights and not worry about the cost.

I can be grateful for my Jewish renewal community, which responded with much loving kindness and concern when they heard about Julian’s illness.

I can be grateful for the three rabbis, Leah Novick, Paula Marcus, and Eli Cohen, who called me to check on me and on Julian.

I can be grateful for all those who included Julian in their misheberach prayers this past Friday after they learned of his illness…and for his friend Rocky who included him in his prayers while Julian was home from camp because he was sick…and my friend Linda Lee who is including him in her daily prayers. I know prayers work, and I see their affect on my son.

I can be grateful for great Western doctors who cared for him and for those who saw that he had been sick too long and needed to come into the hospital for testing.

I can be grateful to the Eastern doctor, Dr. Andrew Wu, whose acupuncture treatments and bad-smelling teas, have helped Julian more than anything else.

I can be grateful for my health and the health of my family…including Julian, who seems to be healthy today.

I can be grateful that all the testing has shown Julian basically to be a normal healthy kid.

There’s so much I can be grateful for — and I am. I do feel profoundly grateful.

And that seems to be the lesson. Maybe we will find something else good in this ordeal, but for now, gratitude seems to be enough.

I haven’t posted a bog in ages. Actually, I posted many a blog in November, just not in this blog. (Check out writenonficinnov.blogspot.com.) I was blogged out after that and couldn’t bring myself to blog in December. Now I’m not so blogged out, and I’m ready to blog again.

Much has happened. My husband lost his job. I missed out on two really big radio interviews. We put our little somewhat feral kitty to sleep. My daughter’s panic attacks have continued, maybe even worsened.

Oh, some good things have happened, too. We went to New York for a Thanksgiving family reunion. I received a tithe check from a church where I often speak. One of my book projects is being considered by a publishing house.

But somehow, it’s those bad things that are stuck in my head, and with them comes my struggle with a Kabbalistic teaching: Gam zu l’tovah. This, too, is for the best.

Sometimes it’s really hard to see why something that happens to us is for the best, at least in the moment when it is happening to us. When we look backwards after a time, often it’s easier to understand how that event was for the best, how it got us to a new – possibly better – place we might not have made it to otherwise. It’s harder to see these things when you are still so close to them, when you are still living them.

Now, I can see to some extent why my husbands lost job was for the best, but, on the other hand, I still have a hard time mustering clear vision on this particular event. He hated that job. It made him miserable. He needed to be out job hunting, and he wasn’t going to put his whole heart and all his effort into finding a new job as long as he stayed in that job. So, losing the job was a good thing. However, with no job, we, as a family, find ourselves in financial peril. I have a hard time seeing that as a good thing. Mind you, he’s doing some contract consulting work, which will keep us going for a while and gives him a feel for doing consulting work, but the fact that he doesn’t have a steady income represents a scary reality for us. Contract work only lasts so long. Our financial situation wasn’t so great before he lost his job, and he isn’t making as much as he was when he held down a full-time job. Plus, in the meantime, all my work has dried up as well leaving us, once again, dependent on his salary. It’s difficult to see this as a good thing.

It’s harder for me to see anything good about me missing two radio interviews. I could rationalize that I wasn’t ready for them. I almost paid for some media training for the second one – a great opportunity to be on a BBC World News talk show, but I didn’t because of my husband’s job situation. I was waiting for the interview to actually be scheduled – which never happened – before committing to the training. (Surprise, surprise. Anyone who knows anything about conscious creation (LOA) knows that I wasn’t focused on the interview happening but on it not happening. I didn’t trust that it would come true. I didn’t have faith.) I suppose that it could be a good thing the interview didn’t come through, because maybe without the media training I would have made a fool out of myself. After the first missed interview, my agent said, “Something better will come along,” and it did…and then it went away. I don’t yet see the good in that. Maybe one day I will. Maybe the BBC will call me up to speak about a topic I would prefer to speak on. As my husband said, “At least now they know who you are.” That is a good thing, but an interview under my belt would have been better. I wish my vision was clearer on this one.

As for putting the little kitty to sleep, I suppose the good in that was that we put her out of her misery – she was sick and possibly suffering at that point. And we then committed to the other kitty that had adopted us and totally adopted her. We took her for her vaccinations and allowed her to sleep in the house at night. Now we have a pet. We lost our dog last year and were left with these two cats – one feral and one our neighbor’s that decided she liked our house better. Now she is ours (Our neighbor is happy about that, by the way.), and we have a pet again.

I sometimes wonder about my books – why they haven’t yet been published. I suppose this too is for the best. I’ll understand why eventually. Maybe I haven’t really figured out how best to write them, what approach to take. Maybe as the years have gone by my perspective has changed enough to significantly improve how I will write them. Maybe for one of my projects that had a publisher and then lost a publisher the first one wasn’t the right one; this one considering the manuscript might be perfect. Maybe I didn’t have the time then to do what it would take to market and promote my books. Now my kids are older and I’ll have a bit more time. While I still find it hard to see how this is for the best, I can refocus my vision and find the good if I try.

I’ve wondered about my daughter – why she had to experience her best friend’s suicide last summer and now suffers from panic attacks. How could that be for good? I suppose one day we’ll know. Maybe she’ll help other people who lose friends to suicide. Maybe it will stop her from ever committing suicide herself. Maybe the fact that she has had to go into counseling for her attacks will giver her insight into herself she wouldn’t have otherwise gained at all or wouldn’t have gained until she was much older. It’s hard, though, to understand how a 15-year-old having to suffer such a tragedy can be for the best.

The issue, I believe, revolves around having faith even when we can’t know the reasons why something happens to us or to others. Faith requires trust. When we have faith, we don’t have to “see it to believe it.” We just believe it. We trust. We don’t have to understand it to believe it either. We just do. We have faith. And so, the Kabbalists said we must have faith that everything is happening just as it is supposed to happen. No matter what befalls us, we must trust that “gam zu l’tovah.” And one day, maybe the reason why will be revealed to us. Ken yehe ratzon. (May it be God’s will.)