A Strange Kind of Peace: Honoring Parents and Staying Sane

This Rosh Hashanah, I want to take on something difficult: not a new habit, not a lofty goal—just a mitzvah. A very old one. One that makes me flinch a little every time I think about it.

Honoring my father and mother.

There aren't many commandments that divide us between camps like this one: because yes, I know a lot of us will ask: what does that mean when the relationship is painful, complicated, or unbalanced? What does it mean when your parent is more in need of comfort than able to offer it, when they seem completely unaware of your own struggle? Is that not too much? Where does it end?

An important aspect of Honoring our parents, and this must be clarified here, is that it is not about doing everything they demand of you, or even loving them. It is not about being a martyr.

It's something else.

Some of us come from families where the brokenness isn’t obvious enough to warrant a clean cut—but it’s there, quietly shaping everything. Divorce, manipulation, bitterness, emotional absence dressed up as love.

And here’s the thing: many of us feel ashamed. Ashamed of the mess, of the history, of what it says about us if they are the ones who raised us.

So we try to be different. We try so hard to become something else—better, clearer, healthier. But in doing that, without even realizing, we often stay completely fused to the story we’re trying to escape.Why?Because when your whole life is shaped by “I will not be like them,” your parents are still the blueprint—even in rejection.

We think we’re running, but we’re really building our identity around the very thing we wish to erase.

So what happens when we reject a trait we see in our parents? Do we escape it? Or do we bury it?

It turns out, the more vehemently we reject something in someone else, the harder it becomes to face it honestly in ourselves.Why would we even want to see it?

We end up spending years mentally rehearsing the pain they caused us—criticizing their choices, reviewing the injustice on loop—to reassure ourselves that it was not right, sooth ourselves that our pain was justified. But somehow, we never truly move on. We need to revisit this loop again and again. Its almost like taking a drug. Why can’t we be free?

Because while all of our psychic energy is spent keeping our sanity in a form of balance, we are not really working on ourselves, we are not really taking an honest look.

If we do, we might collapse. We might think that after all, this means we were wrong to percieve pain, to suffer, and all of it was justified: if we are like that, who are we to be critical of them? To reject what was done to us? To hope for something better. That would really throw us off balance. And in many ways, this how how children cope. By maintaining this balance.

But eventually, we must move on.

First, we have to understand this:

Its not coming from a bad place. It’s coming from a deep need to not just survive but to thrive. A child wants to stay hopeful, believe in what is good. A child wants hope his life can offer something better after he or she leaves her system now.

But the end of the day, all this effort—this inner war against what we came from—it costs us peace... because well, it is a war.

The more we use our emotional resources trying to keep pain at bay, the less we have available to actually look at ourselves with honesty and softness.

And yet the goal of life is to be able to take softly that which makes the human of us. And kindly, patiently, lovingly rafine it. Slowly, noticing its quirks, slowly, admitting its flaws, patiently, redirecting its intentions.

I’m thinking of people who finally can admit they are addicts, they are overpowered by a certain urge. Who claim a certain form of defeat and powerlessness. There’s nothing braver than this surrender. Laying down the arms, admitting the battle is over. Because then what is next, Is for God to teach us. We suddenly realise we don’t have all the answers. God does. And He will now have space to bring them to the table.

And everything that Hashem gave us, is in order for us to start working properly on that human being that is us. And it seems like rejecting where we come from, is somehow keeping us in a loop of addiction, survival and pain. No matter what.

God thus commands us instead, to honor our life source.  

Why that mitzvah, specifically? Why not just “love” them, or at least “don’t yell at them”? Why “honor,” with all its weight and formality?

Honoring your parents isn’t about pretending they were perfect. It’s not about condoning their mistakes or exposing yourself to harm. It’s not about lying to yourself.

It’s about acknowledging that they were the gateway—the portal through which you entered life. And honoring them means, on the deepest level, accepting that you came, and that you came through them.

It’s an act of radical acceptance:I am here.This is my beginning.

I had no choice over this. But I chose to live anyways.

Maybe the deepest emotional wound isn’t what our parents did or didn’t do. Maybe it’s the pain of refusing life itself, because we cannot accept the shape it took when it arrived.

And when we reject life at its root, we create space for suffering, for disconnection, for escape.Addiction often begins there—not just in pain, but in protest. A protest against the shape of our origin.

This mitzvah is not just about family. It’s about healing our relationship with life.

In fact, this is why this commanded is in the category of the commandements between man and God, and not between man and people. That's because we are honoring our parents, in order to know God better.

How does that work?

Honoring our parents is accepting the card set that God gave us to begin our life with. It’s a way of saying “okay, this is what You gave me, You gave me this past, this experience, these personality traits are what I witnessed, what moved me, touched me the most, what hurt me and deeply influenced me” it’s a way to say “this is what I was given to witness coming into this world, this is what I have to work with to become myself”.

It’s a whole shift in perspective. It means everytime you get hurt by something your parent does, to accept in reverence that Hashem is now wanting you to experience this experience; for example, how it feels to be ignored by the person you'de hope would see you when no one else can. And that it is ok. It is just an experience. It’s not throwing you into a endless pit, you are not about to die or being fed to lions. You are just experiencing a strange, deep form of existential abandonment.

Its humbling because the pain is very real and powerful. But somehow Hashem wants you to see it. To bare witness to that kind of human experience.

What will you do about this, is truly what defines you.

You can fight, protest, even say it is unfair and claim you deserve a better treatment. But this will only lead you to experiencing it again because you missed the point. Hashem wants you to bare witness to it. He commands you to Honor your father and mother because in this moment you are being put through the test of having this painful feeling, and you are being forbidden to fight it. Fighting it could take the form of insulting your parent, ridiculing them, trying to prove to them that their behaviors is unacceptable and childish or cruel. -have you ever notice how often this is pointless anyways? A parent does not have truly in his composition the capacity to really take such a rebuke from a child-

This doesn’t mean to allow a parent to miss-treat you. Far from it. Walking away is also a form of honoring. But not RUNNING away in rage and shutting the door in anguish. I am saying, just walking away fully aware of the pain and the cause. And staying in one piece.

That is honoring a parent.

And if there is no reason to walk away litteraly because the parent is sure, clumsy but not inehenrtly cruel or evil -and most parents tend to chill in the middle point of the spectrum- then its just to stay quiet. Accept, the pain, as not coming truly from them. But as one of those existential experiences Hashem wants you to have. Everything connected to our parents is existential. It is such a priviledge, in a way, that God gave us, to bare such intimate witness to the  intensity of it all, to be so close to the questions of creation.

But these questions are hard to bare. And most of us would rather not. Actually. I mean look at me writing all that stuff above. But do you really think that before going to bed alone at night feeling existentially isolated, I think to myself “existential loneliness? Yaaaay such luck! Experience it !”

That is why it is a commandment. Because we MUST. Because Hashem wants us to be stronger than we would ever give ourselves credit for. He is telling us “If you don’t try to bare it, it will control you, you MUST try to bare it”.

Cruel?

Well in fact, it is not cruel. Because we do become wider beings. Stronger, and more independent in a real sense. More capable. People’s expectations sway us less and less. The more we bare the pain of separation and existence, the more we are capable of making decisions that are not tied to external rewards and distractions. The more we can search for what truly resonates and bring peace inside. The more we can face oursleves honestly, and understand that the only way to make sense of all of this, is to take that self, and work with it. And slowly, deeply, we figure, that the only thing that self came to achieve in this world, is to give goodness too. Is to take that experience that has been hard to bare, and bring presence to those who are trying to come to grip with it too. It’s bring companionship to other fellow humans. Slowly, slowly, uniting us back to creation, so eventually, no one will ever have to feel alone again.

And somehow this leads me to wish you that your name will forever be written in the book of life.

Hag Sameah !