What's happening Next?
The name of this week's Torah portion is אחרי, Acharay can be translates as next or afterwards.
They say that hindsight is 20/20 Vision, but how does that help me now when I can only see what's on the table today?
Good morning!
A Russian immigrant to the U
nited States in the 70s had never had a bar mitzvah and had never before put on Tefilin.
There was a piece of advice the Rebbe gave him that I think we all need to pay attention to.
In the back and forth in the conversation, the man was resistant to accepting to commit to put on Tefilin every day.
The Rebbe told him (more or less), "You can not know now for certain how you will feel in twenty years from now.
If you put on Tefilin every day for the next twenty years and you regret it, you're regretting a loss of time of five minutes per day.
But if you look back at your life in twenty years and say I should have put on Tefilin twenty years ago! You're regretting twenty years of life lost!"
THIS man took this to heart and never missed a day of Tefilin for the rest of his life.
If we slow down long enough to think about what the impact of a few minutes devoted to prayer Torah and kindness will have in our lives over time, it puts the effort and the commensurate gain into perspective.
If you slow down long enough to enhance your relationship with your spouse, siblings, parents or your children, and give them five more minutes than you do now, you will gain so many more real years of life.
After Moshiach comes, we will get the real perspective of what we should be doing, let's try to look through the rear view mirror, and remember: objects in the mirror are a lot closer than they appear.