Being raised as an "opponent" by your parents: someone with whom to compete against, another runner in the race, someone of whom to trip up, as a player in a chess game but not being taught the rules, a born Mah Jong player who is instead playing Bingo, winning all the games but not wanting or needing the prizes, sending the prizes home to family as trophies like a reindeer's severed head to be hung on a mantel in the family dining room where you no longer dine.
Raised to be the one to come out last in a race with your parent and siblings so that they come out first, to hobble across the finish line instead before them tattered with the use of only one leg, the others losing track of their goals in their self-made wars because they quibble with each other, so that keeps them from being able to focus on good intentions so they do not win, instead they lose.
As the turtle, winning the war that you did not create, but were set up to fight, and winning their war without a surrender, without a white flag, but instead winning it as a peaceful spiritual leader who follows the rules as set up in The Torah, the rules that they do not know, the rules being G-d's righteous commandments, not the rules of Bingo.
Having G-d pull you over the finish line with a heave and a ho, as you bless those who curse you, to come out ahead, and to know instead that this is how to be the family "mensch."
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