A Lot on Your Plate?

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A few years ago, someone told me about an all–you-can-eat restaurant that charges customers a fixed price no matter how much food they pack on their plates. But then, the establishment ALSO charges customers by weight for the food they leave on their plates, basically for the food they waste. What a clever idea to minimize squander!

 And since my mind is always steeped in Torah, I could not help but make the quick leap to our relationship with the Almighty and our purpose in life: When our time comes, how much of our life’s purpose will be actualized and how much will still be left on the “plate” and wasted?

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Indeed, all of us have things for which we need to repent and have regrets for things we’ve done. We pray, we’re contrite and beg G-d to forgive us.  But few of us realize that on Judgment Day, we will also have to account for all the things we failed to do.

We have only one life in which to partake and utilize the beautiful “smorgasbord” of opportunities and talents with which we were blessed. Yet, sadly, so many of us waste our lives. We starve our potential and feed our fears. But that is no healthy regimen.

 

As the famous quote goes: “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Why are we starving? Because we satisfy ourselves with artificial sweeteners instead of harvesting our talents and potential. We get lost in a world of distractions and amuse ourselves with frippery to pass the time. We let all that life has to offer us and all that we have to offer life, rot and grow cold on the table. We forget that we are here for a reason, a G-dly reason.

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And that is a shame, a travesty, and a tragedy because each one of us is special and has something unique to offer the world.

 

Do you recall the old General Electric motto? “We Bring Good Things to Life”  Well, if GE brings good things to life, just imagine what G-d brings to life! For certain, remarkable things and necessary things. G-d indeed created ex nihilo, i.e., something from nothing. But He doesn’t create something for nothing. He made man and fashioned us in His image. And each of us has a Divine and moral obligation to fulfill our unique potential. G-d said, “Let us make man,” in the plural. We must be partners in our own creation.

 

If you’ll oblige me a moment of levity this reminds me of a joke: “Why did the patient fire his therapist after eating a buffet-style meal at his doctor's house? Because when the patient arrived his therapist told him, ‘Help yourself!’”

 

What stops us from helping ourselves and activating our potential? The answer can be found in this week’s Parasha, Ki Teitzei, which prohibits us from plowing a field with an ox and donkey together. There are many explanations for this prohibition, but the one relevant to us now is that the ox represents the elevated part in us that strives for spiritual greatness, while the donkey represents materialism with its earthly, gravitational pull. We cannot cultivate our Divine potential and greatness while tethered to the disruptive forces of the donkey. In fact, if you rearrange the Hebrew letters of chamor, meaning donkey, it becomes machar --“tomorrow.”  We have the ability to activate our purpose now, but too often we put it off until tomorrow. And as we all well know, tomorrow never comes.

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And so this week’s Torah  reading starts with the words: “When you go out to war on your enemies, the L‑rd, your G‑d, shall deliver them into your hands….”

 

The sages teach that this is not just a physical war, but also a spiritual war against the evil inclination, the Satan. Playing on our fears, he is the one who advocates for tomorrow and distracts us from doing things now! He stalls us and makes us afraid to try positing possibilities of failure. In fact, he is procrastination’s best PR "person."

 

But he is an enemy we must and can fight. We must live in faith, not fear! Imagine a seed that was afraid to change, so it never became a flower; imagine an acorn that was afraid to change, so it never became an oak tree; imagine a caterpillar that was afraid to change, so it never became a butterfly;  imagine an embryo afraid to become a fetus and a baby afraid to leave its mother’s womb.

 

People equate change with loss. But the loss is in NOT changing, in not becoming, in not growing, in not developing and in not maximizing our talents to add value to the world and to serve G-d’s will.

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There is an old but sad joke about Brazil: "Brazil has great potential and it always will." In other words, the potential is never fulfilled. Don't be Brazil!

 

G-d promises us that if we go to war against this enemy, which I call the naysayer, the propagator of fear and self-doubt, G-d will help us. G-d helps those who help themselves. So don’t be afraid to fail. You cannot become a great juggler without first dropping a lot of balls.

 

To quote Winston Churchill: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” 

 

It’s been said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  What’s true in a geo-political historical context is true for us personally as well. The evil inclination triumphs when we, good men, good women, do nothing with our lives and squander our potential.

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How many gifts and blessings has G-d put on our figurative plates? Many more than we can digest in a lifetime. Yet how many of our gifts and talents do we really use and develop to better the world, to serve G-d, to help humankind, and to help ourselves? 

 

With the High Holidays before us, it would serve us well to home in on our unique purpose and talents and start taking stock of our unused and untapped potential. Waste not, want not! Know that G-d will weigh our figurative plates and each of us will be asked a simple question: Why weren’t you as fruitful as you could be? And then, of course, there is always a price to pay.                                                                                             Shabbat Shalom

So That's What You're Thinking?

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In this week’s Parasha, Shoftim, we are reminded of G-d’s warning to the Israelites after leaving Egypt: “You shall not return that way anymore." Some people fear freedom because it comes with great responsibility. Breaking the chains of a slave mentality is challenging. After their freedom from Egypt, many Israelites complained and advocated returning, with distorted recollections leading the way, “We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.”

If you desire to meet the person you're capable of becoming, you must break the chains that control your thoughts and relinquish toxic and paralyzing beliefs about yourself. We've all heard the phrase "mind over matter." Physicist Max Planck, a pioneer of quantum theory, said, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness." G-d's consciousness created the world, and our thoughts shape our reality.

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

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Modern science and self-help gurus emphasize the power of positive thinking. But Judaism has been conveying this wisdom for millennia. It's not simply a call to be optimistic but an acknowledgment of the transformative power of thoughts.

The Tenth Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” speaks to a sin of the mind. It's considered perilous to violate because coveting can lead to transgressing other commandments. Such is the power of the mind. As the saying goes, "What you think, you become." Our mothers always told us to watch our steps, but monitoring our thoughts is even more vital, for they dictate our paths.

This month of Elul is a period of introspection and repentance before the Jewish High Holy Days. Yet, how can we hope for genuine change if we still cling to old, limiting beliefs? Einstein wisely noted, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Many Holocaust survivors endured due to their ability to visualize a life beyond the concentration camp fences.

If you wish to transform your life, reshape your thinking. Here is an example of why it’s not good to have a memory like an elephant. Consider a baby elephant which is tied by a rope to a stake in the ground. When he’s a baby he's not strong enough to pull the stake up. Eventually he becomes strong and is amply capable of doing so, but his mind has already been conditioned so he doesn’t even try.

Chabad Chasidism teaches, “Think good and it will be good.” A positive mindset amplifies the potential within. As it's often said, "A healthy mind is the best weapon."

In this week’s Torah reading, the Israelites are instructed to uphold truth. It's intuitive to avoid deceitful individuals, but we must remember that oftentimes, we deceive ourselves the most.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," says Joan Didion. But we need to be very selective about the stories we tell. Like any book, you carry the story with you to bed and think about it throughout your day.

Negative self-talk can be our downfall, making us believe we're inadequate or destined to fail. However, G-d promises a land of abundance and calls upon us to rise, to grow, and to look forward. “...For the L-rd said to you, ‘You shall not return that way anymore.’” Shabbat Shalom 

Who's Doing the Walking?

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When we were children my brother had a distorted old pair of running shoes which he refused to throw away because they were so comfortable. My mother, to no avail, kept telling him that distorted shoes affect your walk and can misshape a growing foot. She also had her own theory for me too. She’d say, if you walk around in very baggy clothing all the time, you’ll grow into them and won’t feel yourself getting fat. Now this is no blog on orthopedics or weight, but the running shoe and sweatpants admonishments have become symbolic life lessons for me. Where she was a pragmatist, I was a philosopher.

How often in life do we fall into what is comfortable for us instead of what is good for us? Too often! People are so reluctant to leave their comfort zones as though it was some exemplary state of being. My mother was right though, wearing more fitting clothes has kept me thin; as for the running shoes, they eventually got tossed. The comfort zone, dear readers, is not your friend. It’s a place where we lull ourselves with excuses, cower in fear and stop seeing who we are and what we are becoming. In the “bagginess” the details get lost and there is no valuable reference frame to measure our lives, our growth and G-d forbid our failures.

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How many of us have chosen friends because we feel “comfortable” to be “ourselves” instead of finding friends who are role models and who can teach us something. Motivational speakers say that we are the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time. As author Jim Kwik says, “If you hang out with nine broke people, be sure you’ll be the tenth one.” The Talmudic sages too have something to say on this matter: Firstly, “Distance [your]self from a bad neighbor [friend], and do not befriend an evil person.” As Rabbi Hanina said, “I have learned much from my teachers and even more from my friends….” Comfortable to be “ourselves?” We don’t even know who we are unless we’ve been tried and tested. Have courage to fail! Math teaches us that the more times you try, even if you fail, the more chances you have to succeed. Failure is not a death sentence--it’s a teacher.

It's sad; No, it’s tragic how many of us get too comfortable in jobs that are beneath us or “love” relationships that diminish us, or body sizes that inhibit us or habits that kill us? We even grow comfortable in our misery and the toxic voices in our head: “The whole world is bad,” “I’m the only good normal person left” and as such we disengage, stay in our bathrobe, eat a can of Pringles and watch YouTube.  

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A person has 70,000 thoughts a day. How are those thoughts feeding our choices? Are they poisonous thoughts or healthy? If someone would come up to anyone of us and say that we’re a big loser, a failure, a moron and an idiot etc., we’d tell them where to get off, maybe punch them in the nose. The reply would certainly not be G-dly. So why do we talk to ourselves that way? Judaism prohibits talking badly about people, that includes ourselves. Change your thoughts, change your life.

Yes, it’s intimidating to dip one’s toe in the big wide world because even as we get inspired, we really think everyone else is better than us, smarter than us, more capable than us. Basically, we are afraid of life. But as the book Outliers portrays via data, “geniuses” are made, not born. Few are greater than us naturally. The proof is that the self-help market is a multibillion-dollar market. Without ever opening a self-help book, merely acknowledging the size of that industry should be an instant cure for all our insecurities. It’s telling us, rather shouting at us, that everyone is in the same boat. Everyone is afraid or insecure on some level.

Yet, we fear to venture forth and the comfort zone sustains the status quo, we think. But it does not. Life is like a treadmill and it’s always moving; you are either going forward or being pulled backwards, sometimes imperceptibly slowly but going backwards just the same. We are afraid to know the truth about ourselves and prefer to remain legends in our own minds. But be sure, we were not assembled in China with substandard components; G-d created us and He’s the best manufacturer. When we connect with our G-dly purpose, there is no such thing as failure.

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We are soon entering the month of Elul on the Hebrew calendar, which is a month of introspection wherein people try to improve themselves prior to the oncoming high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But change can never really come if we don’t hone in on what needs to be changed. This week’s Parasha Re’eh opens with the words, “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” We think the choice should be clear and easy. But the evil inclination starts blurring the lines between choices and we very often grab for the curse because it’s comfortable.

Friends, we have to start analyzing our lives, categorizing our behaviors and start choosing blessings. And we have to stop loving things, people, habits, foods, drugs and drinks, etc., that don’t love us back. There isn’t one among us who doesn’t want to adopt the American army slogan “Be all that you can be.” Many have just stopped acknowledging it. But it’s never too late or impossible.

We are told that G-d doesn't recognize the Jewish people from one Yom Kippur to the next. The pure souls that left the synagogue a year earlier have returned in a blemished state one year later. My prayer for all of us that next year G-d won’t recognize us once again but only because we are better, brighter, happier, healthier and holier than ever before.

And as my mother taught, stop falling into things that mask you faults or accommodate them, and start clinging to that which will fix them. 

                               Shabbat Shalom!

If

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There are many eloquent words in the dictionary, even very long ones, such as Floccinaucinihilipilification. At 29 letters, it is considered one of the longest words in the English language. Ironically, the word is much ado about nothing and means "the estimation of something as valueless." It seems like a lot of effort at articulation to deem something worthless.

Conversely, the word "if," so short and succinct, is often underestimated, yet it is the steering wheel of life. It is upon this very simple two-lettered swivel point that our entire lives spin. We learn the conditional value of "if" early on in childhood: "If you behave, you will get a toy"; "If you eat your spinach, you can have cake." It's a slippery word that slides so easily off our tongues that we don't take notice of how it controls us day in and day out. This pattern continues throughout our lives, subtly guiding us in making choices based on the conditions we believe are necessary for success, happiness or fulfillment.

The Jewish people, during their forty years of wandering in the desert, also fell prey to the allure of "ifs." They attributed their rebellious nature and disobedience to external factors blaming the harsh desert conditions for their actions. Instead of taking personal responsibility for their wrongdoings, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they reassigned blame. The final finger points to the snake. What is part of the ultimate punishment? "He (man) will crush your head, and you (the serpent) will bite his heel."

That brings us to this week's Torah reading, called Eikev. G-d brings the Jews to the border of the Promised Land with an "if" of His own. Basically, He tells the Jewish people that they will be impervious to anything harmful, such as illness, famine, enemies, drought, infertility, etc., on the proviso, "IF" they keep His laws.

But in the Hebrew text, the same word used to imply "if"—the word ekev—also means "heel," as in the heel of a foot. In short, the same foot that hits the pavement to usher them into the land has the ability to pivot—to turn on one's heel—and to drive them out if they stray from G-d's laws. The snake, i.e., the evil inclination, is always waiting to bite our heel and poison our will to serve G-d. It helps manufacture the "ifs" that cloud our judgment and pollute our souls. G-d promises protection and blessings for the Jewish people on the condition that they follow His laws faithfully. But He also warns them that straying from His guidance can lead to adverse consequences. So, it is up to us to crush the snake's head to protect our own.

How often do we hear people say, "If I had more money, I wouldn't work on the Sabbath or give charity," or "If I were married, I'd keep kosher"? Our entire lives hang on "if." When we start doing what we must and stop making excuses why we can't, we will find G-d there to sustain us; for, "Man does not live by bread alone, but rather by whatever comes forth from the mouth of the Lord does man live."

This principle extends beyond our relationship with G-d and permeates our personal lives as well. Relying on "ifs" to justify our inaction or misbehaviors will only hinder our progress. Instead, we must be courageous and embrace the moment. Realize each second is a test and an opportunity to squeeze out the light. The perfect time and place rarely align. We have to break free from the constraints of "ifs" and take charge of our lives. And so, perhaps the best sentence starting with the word "if" is from the great Rabbi Hillel who said, "If not now, when?"

Shabbat Shalom!