Rabbi YY Jacobson
Reset to Live
They tell the story about this fellow who come home from work, walks up to his house and sees the door wide open. Within a moment, he realizes that there is absolute chaos brewing inside.
Indeed, his instinct is authentic, and he walks inside and there is exactly that: chaos. First off, ice cream is strewn all over the couch and household furniture. All of his children are as well running around. The house is more than just filthy; it seems as if it must have been hit by a tornado. All of the younger children are in need of bathing.
Running upstairs, he finds his wife resting in bed, looking very relaxed, reading a novel. She looks calm and cool, without a worry in the world. “I don’t understand! Do you know what is going on downstairs? What happened?” She lets out a smile, and in a very serene tone, says, “Do you know how you often come home and say to me, ‘What do you do all day? Why are you stressed? I, as the husband, go to work, pay the bills, put food on the table, while you take care of the kids and the house. Why are you so tired?’ Well, whatever I do each day, today, I didn’t do it.”
Of course, this anecdote teaches how we often see something or things happening, and we take it for granted. Yet, having the kids organized and the house put together does not happen in a vacuum. Often, spouses are not aware of just how much work and effort goes into what they do, whether it be the husband or wife.
I share this anecdote with you also because of what occurred in our world during the last few months.
It is hard now to imagine the following conversation, but let us entertain it.
It is just a few days before Purim, and I turn to you and say, “In just a few days, every business in the world will be transformed. Every shul and school will be closed down. Every game, theater, shopping mall and restaurant will be shut down. Every child who is overseas will return home and stay put for months.”
Anyone hearing this would call me insane. It cannot happen. But look what actually did happen? Who could have brought such a thing about? Not a bullet was shot; it was simply a small virus, invisible to the eye; and it brought 7.7 billion people to their knees, and changed the landscape of the globe. Everything mentioned above did happen. All from a tiny, little virus.
Now let’s come back to the joke. You ask Hashem, “What do You do every day?” “Well, today, I didn’t do it.” We look at life and take it for granted. We wake up in the morning, take a look outside and the sun is shining. But, of course, the sun should shine; what else should it do? We take it for granted.
We take it for granted that there are trillions and trillions of cells in our body, and each one knows what to do based on the instructions of the DNA within the nucleus of each cell. We take for granted that the ecosystem is entirely balanced that it allows life to continue as we know it. Of course.
But sometimes, the woman of the house tells the husband, “You ask what I do every day? Today I didn’t do it.”
What a sobering thought and important awareness in life.
What does this tell us?
It makes us rethink everything. It allows us to click restart on our life. Amidst the tragedy and hardship, we have also been given a tremendous gift. It is the gift of inner introspection and transformation.
There is an expression in davening, “V’chol ha’chaim yoducha selah – And all the living ones will thank You for eternity.” The halachic authorities tell us that the word Chaim (comprised of the letters ches, yud, yud, mem) is an acronym. There are four individuals who, after having gone through difficulty and emerge alive, have an obligation to thank Hashem. They are: choleh (someone who was severely ill), yam (someone who voyaged across the ocean), yisurim (someone who was entrapped in prison) and midbar (someone who traveled through the desert). Today, these individuals thank Hashem in the form of the blessing Ha’Gomel.
The question is why these individuals are called those who are ‘Chaim,’ alive? These were people who underwent a near-death scare and whose lives were compromised and almost lost completely. They should be the least alive.
But, in truth, sometimes, it is the crisis in life which removes all the crutches we have and actually allows us to live life to the fullest.
The commentaries note that we say (in relation to the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayer addition) Zachreinu L’chaim (‘Remember us for life,’ pronounced with a shva) and not La’Chaim, which accentuates the lamed. This is because La’Chaim sounds like Lo’Chaim, ‘Not life,’ which we do not want to imply.
But, if this is so, why when it comes to the time that the Chazan asks for rain and dew, do we say that it should be ‘L’Chaim v’lo La’maves,’ for life and not for death with La’maves accented with a kamatz. We should instead say L’maves, with a shva as we do with L’chaim (in the case of Zachreinu L’chaim), to avoid it sounding as if we are using a double negative, “Not, not for death,” which actually implies exactly what we don’t want! If we say, “I don’t want ‘Not death’” that actually means death. We would then be asking for death.
The answer is that we are asking exactly what we say. There are two types of life. One is where matters are simply routine, and we are simply alive because we are not dead. But that is not what we want. We don’t want life that is defined simply by the absence of death. We want life that is defined by a vision, by one which we seize. We are thus asking Hashem, “Don’t just allow me to live a life that is defined by the fact that I didn’t die; allow me to actually live fully!”
And sometimes, it takes a crisis to bring us to life. It reminds us what makes up our inner core and enables us to remove the mask and facade, thereby allowing us to truly focus on the importance and purpose of our life.
“V’chol ha’chaim yoducha selah – And all the living ones will thank you for eternity.” The people who went through those journeys never look at life the same way. They appreciate what a moment of life means. They don’t just live from one distraction to another distraction. They have been given the ability to see what is truly valuable, timeless and what you want to hold onto, not what is simply a distraction.
A close friend of mine was in a hospital in Miami along with many other patients, and each one passed away besides him. He is now a transformed person. But each of us in our own way must look inwardly.
Before these days, everyone used to travel. There was never a point in time when travel was never so easy. And then suddenly everything stopped. We may look at it as an inconvenient and nuisance. But, in truth, we were all given a gift. It is the gift to start asking that important question: What is real life? What does a day that I am truly alive look like? If you can genuinely answer this question, and lead your life in consonance with your answer, then you have received a tremendous gift, borne out of all the unique circumstances of these days.
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