Building a container: Lessons from Terumah

For the past few weeks, I have really struggled to feel inspired enough to write.

I recently traveled back to the US for a couple of weeks to visit my family and I told myself: What a perfect time to write. What a perfect opportunity to draw and work on my projects. But instead, I didn’t write, barely at all. I started a few pieces here and there, but left them completely unfinished because I didn’t feel the inspiration strongly enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was that I cared so much my body completely shut down. It happens whenever I feel that I am sitting on something precious.

I got incredibly down on myself. I felt like I was running away from something precious out of fear, paralyzed by the pressure for it to be meaningful.

With my writing, I always tell myself, “I’ll do it when I’m feeling inspired; it has to come from the heart.” And of course, it does have to come from the heart. But at a certain point, waiting for the “feeling” becomes a trap. When we only act on things based on intense motivation and inspiration, we often find ourselves not ever actually being consistent with doing the thing.

Sometimes I find myself lying in bed—feeling overwhelmed, sad, and disconnected, wanting connection, wanting to do something, but feeling too ashamed to go out and get it. We don’t feel like going to work, we don’t feel like reaching out to people, and we don’t feel like writing because we don’t feel at our best. And then staying in and not even trying or reaching for those things makes us feel even worse, because it disconnects us from ever reaching the very thing that we want which is the connecting, the doing, the achieving.

We forget that sometimes, the exact feeling we are searching for only arrives after we consistently do the process we’ve been avoiding.

As I finally settled back into my life here in Israel, I decided to read this week’s Torah portion: Terumah, and within it, I found so much to learn from.

In the Torah, we have just come down from the ultimate spiritual high of Mount Sinai—a moment of the deepest revelation and inspiration. But in this week’s portion, the Torah immediately shifts into incredibly detailed, tedious instructions for building the Mishkan (the Tabernacle).

God asks the people to bring a Terumah (an offering or gift of whatever materials they have) to build a physical sanctuary. Why do we need this rigid structure right after such a profound spiritual high? Because the Torah is teaching us how to go about our lives when things are just ordinary. We aren’t going to feel good and inspired all the time, and honestly, most of the time we don’t. So, when the inspiration fades, we need boundaries and structure to hold the space for the holiness to actually live on.

It’s really interesting because it got me thinking about how we are as human beings, and my role as a therapist. Sometimes, I get frustrated when a client, a friend, or someone I love is protecting something deep inside them that I know needs to be attended to, yet they protect it with their life. I struggle with whether to push them, and if I don’t, I get upset with myself, thinking I could have done more.

But if someone feels pressured to be deep or profound every time they show up, they will never feel safe enough for what is real to actually emerge. For this very reason, in therapy, you create a container—a set time, every single week—where the person can just show up exactly as they are. Some weeks are messy and some weeks, nothing groundbreaking happens; but it is the act of showing up, week after week, that builds the safe space where the beauty and the truth can finally live.

I realized I need to create that exact same container for myself with pretty much everything that I want to build in my life.

Just like a person needs to feel safe before they can be authentic, I have to make myself feel safe in my writing. What makes us feel safe? The ability to show up as we are. The ability to not be criticized, to not have everything figured out, and to not have anything particularly special to say. The ability to just be messy. Instead of telling myself “I will only write when I’m feeling inspired,” I need to shift to “I will write 30 minutes a day and let whatever come out, come out.” It’s the same thing for learning a new language, a sport, anything that you want to get better at—the key is consistency and showing up as is, not showing up only when you’re feeling like it.

When we feel pressured, we cannot be free. The key is to “force” ourselves to sit down, not to force inspiration, but to build the container. The goal isn’t to be inspired; the goal is just to write.

It’s like building a playground. If we are required to be amazing at something before we even step onto the playground, we will never play. But if we give ourselves a designated space with clear boundaries, we can run around, try things out, and discover what we are actually capable of. If we never step onto the playground, we will never play. But if we demand perfection from ourselves the moment our feet hit the woodchips, we will never even want to.

Relationships work the exact same way. Whether as a friend, a daughter, or a partner, there are days you simply do not want to show up. But you can never build the deep, close relationship you crave without showing up during the difficult, uninspired times. Living by our values is what ultimately provides long-term satisfaction and meaning, and sometimes that means doing the thing when the feeling isn’t there.

The key is not to create a place where something must happen, but a place where something is allowed to happen. If we want to build anything we have to learn how to draw a circle around ourselves, pick up the brush, and just make a fucking mess. The freedom to do and try things inside a built-in container is exactly what colors the world.