Abba Eban is famous for having once quipped, "History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

It seems like a cynical view, but Eban was, in the main, spot on with this remark.  It's rare that a person will get totally honest with himself and admit that his way isn't working until he's already gone through a good deal of misery.  That's why it's hard to convince people to make a positive change -- be it in thoughts, feelings or behaviors -- until they've reached a state of desperation.

In some circles, we call this "getting tired of being tired."  Some call it "surrender."  Others call it "getting real."  Whatever it's called, it speaks to a nagging truth about us that until we're laid out flat, we just can't seem to throw in the towel no matter how bad of beating we're taking.

In chasidus, we speak of the state of bitul -- self-nullity and self-abnegation.  All growth comes from bitul.  Lack of growth is the result of the opposite of bitul -- rigidity of ego.

Chasidus uses a metaphor to explain why we have to become nothing before we can become a new something.  A seed is a something.  It is a seed.  If you put it in the ground and tend to it, it will become a tree.  But in between being a perfectly good seed and being a tree, the seed falls apart.  At the moment the seed ceases being a seed, it's not yet a tree.  The old seed is lost but the new tree has yet to grow.

There's a valuable secret hidden in this teaching.  To become a new something, we have to first become nothing.  We can take one of two routes through this process.  The first is to keep doing the same old stuff until we're so beaten up that we're forced to listen to reason.  The second is to choose to humble ourselves, to willingly let go of self, to surrender our something-ness, submit to a temporary state of nothing-ness and let G-d make a new and better something out of us.

The former is called humiliation.  The latter is called humility.  We can choose whichever we like.  But , knowingly or not, we always choose.

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