Shape Up! by Aliza Davidovit

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 when I was a teen. She’d say, if you walk around in baggy sweatpants 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 or Shangrila. I can tell you two things: Wearing tight clothes has kept me thin; as for my brother, I’ve seen straighter feet.

The comfort zone, dear readers, is not your friend. It’s a place where we lull ourselves with excuses and it is also a place where we stop seeing who we are and what we are becoming. How many of us have chosen friends because we feel “comfortable” to be “ourselves” instead of finding friends who egg us on to try harder and be better, not out of our envy of them necessarily but because they make us realize that we can be better too. How many of us get too comfortable in jobs that are beneath us or “love” relationships that diminish us or body sizes that inhibit or habits that kill us? We even grow comfortable in our misery: The whole world is bad, I’m the only good normal person left and as such I will disengage, stay in my bathrobe, eat a can of Pringles and watch TV.

Yes, it’s intimidating to dip one’s toe in the big wide world because even as we think we are great, we really think everyone else is better than us, smarter than us, more capable than us. 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.

From experience I can tell you the world is filled with people just like you and me and some, excuse me, are schmendricks of the highest order. The only difference for the most part between them and us is they got of bed an hour earlier than us and stepped out of their comfort zones. Billionaire Mark Cuban who started out selling garbage bags door to door told me that he got into the computer business not knowing a single thing about computers. You know what his advice to me was? “No balls, no babies!”

This week on the Hebrew calendar marks the month of Elul, 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. A first clue is offered to us in this week’s Bible reading: “Is there a man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, that he should not cause the heart of his brothers to melt, as his heart." In other words take a good look at who you are “hanging with” and how they are influencing you to advance or retreat in life. It is also written, “You shall set up judges...for yourself,” which on the face means what it means. But it also means to surround yourself with habits, people, environments, challenges that will not let you get too comfortable and which will inspire you and enable you to grow, that will be deliberate in watching you! Don’t be a shrinking violet. Your potential is not to be found amidst the lint in your bathrobe pocket. Comfortable is overrated. Get yourself a new pair of running shoes and as the Nike slogan says, "Just Do It."
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Will Tomorrow Ever Come? by Aliza Davidovit

The year 2009 is now being deferred to history as 2010 is about to be discovered. As with the first page of a school notebook, the first week of a new year, or the first day of a diet, we cannot help but be filled with optimism and the desire to reset our behaviors when the chance to be a “new you” presents itself. Yet it is not long into the week that our neat handwriting that marked an optimistic beginning yields to scribbling; it’s not long into the year that yogurt yields to cheesecake and that our gym card becomes as lazy to get off the couch as we do.

As we look through Time magazine’s lists of 2009 that reflect on everything from the people of the year to the worst gaffs, scandals, feuds and breakups, it’s hard not to wonder how things went so wrong. How could Governor Sanford disappear to Argentina with a mistress and think he’d get away with it? How could a clean-cut guy like Tiger Woods be such a yutz? How could no one see what Bernie Madoff was up to? How could uninvited guests gallivant right into the White House? How could it be decided that 9/11 terrorists will stand trial in a New York court? It would have taken a Disney stretch of the imagination at the onset of 2009 to predict all the troubles and trauma that kept us on our toes and out of jobs in the past year.

The question is why do we keep getting ourselves into trouble time and time again even as we try as individuals, as leaders, as pop icons, to turn a new leaf? The answer came to me both in this week’s Bible reading which marks the end of the book of Genesis and the beginning of the Jewish exodus. It also came to me with the kind wishes of someone who said, “Hope the New Year brings you great things.”

It is upon that wish that I realized how troubles brew. For what I noticed by going through Time magazine’s epic failures of the year, is not what 2009 brought to people, but rather what people brought to 2009. Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Is it any wonder, then, that if we brought to 2009 everything that we were in ’08 that nothing had a chance to get better but rather was condemned to failure? We are so gung-ho on attaching ourselves to the blank slate of what lays ahead simply because it is the easy way out: “Oh, let’s see what tomorrow brings.” But as we traverse that pristine white landscape of tomorrow we are still wearing yesterday’s filthy muddied boots. How do we then wonder how we’ve ruined this too and made such a mess?

It’s at this time of year, while making resolutions, that we should be looking to the past and scrutinizing our behaviors and cycles of weakness. I’m not suggesting we flog ourselves for our mistakes but rather we take an honest look at why they happened and set up flares and barbed wire around the things that led us astray. The new you that you desperately seek will not be found in the health club membership card, it will be found inside of you. We know academically that nations who forget their history are condemned to repeat it. The same logic applies to our personal lives.

In this week’s Bible reading, the last of the patriarchs, Jacob, dies. But before he passes away, he gathers all his sons, the future 12 tribes of Israel, to bless them. Jacob, however, knows that in order for his sons to have any chance at a healthy future they have to take a reckoning of their past. In his last breath Jacob scolds those who sinned and points out their faults, their flaws and their misbehavior, as well as their strengths—it’s hardly a touchy-feely Hollywood goodbye scene. He does not accommodate their weaknesses in one everything-will-be-okay- happy-go-lucky blessing. The custodians of the future need to know “what” and “why” they did things wrong in the past and then fix it. Yesterday is not something to run away from like a mugger wanting to take everything away from you, it is rather a guru, a teacher, with something great to give you.

So my dear friends, as we accelerate into 2010, don’t forget to take a look into the rear-view mirror once in awhile and to leave your muddied boots on the doormat that read “2009.”

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This blog is dedicated to all my Facebook friends. May God be with you always and Happy New Year!

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The Lights of Faith by Aliza Davidovit

The Sun’s not coming out today.
Would you come out on a day like this?

The temperature has dropped. It’s freezing outside. The leaves have abandoned the trees once again. And the gray chilling skies make the outdoors evermore uninviting. The sun seems to have absconded as well like a fleeing accomplice to all that has brought darkness upon this great land: the flailing economy, the unemployment rate, the federal debt, the housing crisis, a divisive Congress and the unprecedented uncertainty about the future. It appears to be the winter of our greatest discontent. Doom and gloom has replaced the optimistic morning dew and is choking our spirits and setting us into further depression and despair. It becomes easier day by day to become apathetic and adjust our eyes to the darkness instead of searching for the light and creating new light.

Yet, I urge everyone, even if the sun is not coming out on a day like this, YOU MUST. Interestingly, it is at this time of year, in fact this week, that the nights are longest and darkness seems to prevail as the sun goes to bed early. But it is also the most precious time of year as both Jews and Christians celebrate their holidays of lights with brightly lit Christmas trees and the glow of the Chanuka menorah. Each is a symbolic lesson to us that in the blackest of times, we must be the ones responsible for bringing light to our world and our lives. These holidays of lights are a priceless metaphor that light triumphs over darkness (and it always will).

Orphan Annie was right, the sun will come out tomorrow, but today create your own sunlight. It takes just a single flame to dispel much darkness. If you’re feeling miserable, put on some makeup and make yourself look pretty, if you’re a woman. For a man, shave and go to the gym; you will feel better. If you’re feeling antisocial, go give a few dollars or a cup of coffee to a homeless person--your spirits will be lifted. If you’re feeling depressed, start singing the happiest song you know. Undoubtedly you will crack yourself up, and if your voice is as good as mine you make crack a few mirrors too. You cannot get out of a black hole by entertaining the darkness but rather by seeking the light.

In this week’s Bible portion we read about Joseph. One day he was the beloved favorite son of Jacob; the next day his brothers sold him into slavery; the next day he rose to great prominence in Egypt; the next day he was thrown into jail; the next day he was the most powerful man in Egypt under Pharaoh. The rollercoaster of his life had bigger highs and lows than the 456-foot high Kingda Ka joyride at Six Flags Great Adventure. Nonetheless, he rose from the snake-filled pit into which his brothers cast him to great power, prestige and prominence. And the Bible teaches us something very interesting about Joseph’s attitude throughout. The dungeon to which he is condemned is called in Hebrew “Beit Hasohar,” the “house of light.” Even in the depths of a dark dungeon, Joseph maintained his faith in God, he remained optimistic and hopeful and he created his own “light.”

Yet just as abruptly as Joseph’s problems came upon him, they left him with equal speed as he was beckoned to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.

My friends, the trials and hardships inflicted on man are limited. Just when a person least expects salvation, it is just around the corner. There is a season for everything in our lives, even a winter of discontent. The things we want most usually hit us by surprise as if God is trying to remind us, again, that our blessings come from Him no matter what else we may think.

Indeed the world stage and our personal stages appear pretty bleak these days. Many people even feel it may be the end of time. I prefer to think in terms of a great new beginning. We can learn from Joseph and our beautiful holidays of lights to never yield to the darkness of despair but rather to have faith in almighty God and trust ALWAYS that the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

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