Episode 27 - The Bath & Body Works Effect: How Proximity Blinds Us to Life's Lessons

Have you ever wondered why we often miss the profound moments happening right before our eyes? That divine orchestration that seems so obvious in retrospect yet completely eludes us in the moment?

Today's reflection explores this fascinating phenomenon through the lens of trust and faith. Using a striking analogy of a Bath and Body Works store, we examine how proximity desensitizes us to what would otherwise overwhelm a newcomer. Just as store employees become immune to the powerful fragrances that hit customers like a ton of bricks, we too become numb to life's miracles and challenges when we're constantly immersed in them.

This is precisely why sacred traditions emphasize regular periods of separation and reflection. The Sabbath isn't merely a religious practice but a practical opportunity to step back, reassess, and return to life with fresh perspective. Similarly, religious holidays strategically punctuate our year, forcing us to pause when we might otherwise remain caught in the cycle of busyness.

According to Rabbeinu Bachia, one who truly trusts in divine providence experiences minimal heartache from life's inevitable setbacks. Whether facing business failures, unpaid debts, or health challenges, they recognize that "the creator arranges his affairs better than he can and chooses what is good for him better than he could have chosen for himself." This isn't resignation but a profound recognition that everything—even apparent misfortunes—serves our highest good.

When faith evolves into trust through repeated experiences, you develop a spiritual resilience that transforms your entire life. You become "bulletproof" against negative emotions because you understand with absolute certainty that your current circumstances are precisely what you need for growth. Share your own stories of faith with me—they might just inspire our entire community to recognize the divine hand at work in their lives.

Transcript

Sharing Personal Faith Stories

Speaker 0 0:00

Good morning everybody. We had a story that I shared yesterday, a personal story and experience from my life that I hope impacted you all and helped you build a little bit of faith and work towards trust. And I want to encourage you guys, by the way, that if you have such stories I know you do the question is have you recognized them? And if you do have stories like that that you recognize, that are impactful, that have found its mark in your life, that you can no longer explain away with coincidence and that have helped you to build your faith and trust and you want to pass it on, I encourage you to share. Feel free to send me a private message with your story and, at the very least, you'll inspire me to move forward and, who knows, I may even share it with the audience, with your permission. So if you do have those stories which, again, I know you do it's a matter of going through your inventory and recognizing them. Please feel free to share them and we can inspire others with your firsthand accounts. Yesterday, in my story, I made a statement, I brought up, actually a question and the question was how is it possible that I was in the story? It happened to me and my family and somehow, for some strange reason, it took me years to understand the gravity of the story and how impactful it was to see Hashem's hand so amazingly in my life. And I want to explain to you why that is, and it happens to all of us all the time. The simple answer is we're just programmed that way. That's how it is. The more we are in the thick of life, the harder it is for us to recognize what we're going through. And we gave the example a few days ago about COVID. And having gone through that, I want to give you another example that'll probably make it a little bit clearer for you.

Speaker 0 1:48

You go shopping in a mall. There's a store in a mall. I think it's called Bath and Body Works. I'm not sure. I'm not a shopper, but I know that there's a store that sells lots of fragrances and soaps and creams and all this kind of stuff. It's a store that I don't go into anymore. I can't go into it because when you do, you get punched in the face with the smell. It's such a powerful, overbearing smell and it hits you like a ton of bricks literally thousands of items in the store, each one giving off its own scent and they're all fresh, ready to be sold. And so it's so pung, it's so powerful that I literally have to hold my breath when I walk in there and slowly start taking shallow breaths to be able to acclimatize to this smell.

The Bath & Body Works Analogy

Speaker 0 2:34

Now, the individual who's working behind the counter, you think that they smell the same intensity of odor that I'm smelling when I walk into that store? The answer is obviously not. They don't. Why not? The reason they don't smell it is because they're in it. They've become used to it. They've become used to the intensity of the smell. When do they smell it? When they go on lunch and they come back an hour later after having smelled fresh, clean air, and now they walk into the store again, it hits them again. It hits them hard. Now, when they go home at night and they come the next morning, that smell hits them in the morning. It's even stronger than when they took that break for lunch. And when they take a few shifts off, or when they go on vacation for a week and they come back and they go into that store in the morning. It hits them even harder than the overnight separation.

Speaker 0 3:31

Why is it? Why is it that the further we're away from the situation, the more we recognize what it is when we're back in it. And the answer is that's the way it was designed. Is that's the way it was designed? We have an obligation every day, I would suggest, but certainly at the very least once a week on the Sabbath. On the seventh day, you separate yourself, you pull yourself out of the mundane, out of the ordinary, out of the everyday, and you analyze and assess your life so that when you come back into it after the Sabbath, then you realize that you're either doing well or you're not doing well. You recognize the reality of where you are in and how you are conducting your life. The Shabbat, the Sabbath, gives you the opportunity to analyze and reassess your life. That's also why we have the holidays, when we have them. Right.

Sabbath: Time for Self-Assessment

Speaker 0 4:23

Some holidays are a couple of days. Some of them are eight days long, right, and we said before Passover that they always, without fail, they fall at the hardest time of the year. Right? Give you a small example when do the highest of holidays fall in Judaism, new Year, rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the highest holiday that we have it happens right at the end of summer, right? And if you're living in a place like I live in Toronto, where we're lucky if we get a summer, if we have a nice September, which often happens too bad you now have to cut your summer short and you have to go back into preparing for the highest of holidays.

Speaker 0 5:02

And if you're into school, forget about it. September's a write off. So you're now trying to get into a new grade or or going from middle school to high school or university, whatever it is, and now you've got to pull yourself out of it and forget that you were ever there. It's very trying, and the reason it's trying and difficult is because those are the opportunities that God forces upon you to say, guys, assess, assess. Because when you're in it, when it's happening to you, you are numb to it. You don't feel it because you are distracted. You are in it and it consumes you and you don't have the ability to pull yourself out of it and assess. That is why, my friends, it's important that we take the Shabbat, the Sabbath, seventh day every week, and utilize it, maximize the holidays, if for nothing else than just to do a real assessment of your lives, spiritually and materially.

The Fourth Benefit of Trusting God

Speaker 0 5:56

Having said that, the fourth worldly benefit of trust in God is, according to Rabbeinu Bachia that one who relies on God has little heartache as a result of his business ventures, even if he suffers a setback, such as when merchandise remains with him unsold or he's unable to collect a debt or he's struck by bodily illness that makes him unable to work. Debt or he's struck by bodily illness that makes him unable to work these obstacles do not cause him distress. Why? Because he knows that the creator arranges his affairs better than he can and chooses what is good for him better than he could have chosen for himself. That is a huge, huge statement, and we've talked about that in bits and pieces throughout the beginning of this entire podcast.

Speaker 0 6:42

The reality of it is whether you're in business or whether you work for somebody else, we're faced with challenges all the time, and I think what Rabbeinu Bachia is referring to over here more than anything else is accepting with love the downside, the seemingly bad. Why is it seemingly bad? Because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. When somebody has built faith that is morphed into trust, and when you've gone through experience after experience that commands and tests you and forces you to build that trust, you become bulletproof. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can harm you. Nothing can make you sad, nothing can make you angry, nothing can make you jealous.

Speaker 0 7:27

You know that everything that you have is perfect. You can't have anything less or anything more at this stage of your life. You know that with absolute certainty. It's not that you're resigning to it. It's not that you're saying, oh well, I guess this is my life. No, on the contrary, it's perfect. It couldn't be any better for you. You couldn't have anything better going on in your life that is more advantageous to you and assisting you to become the better version of you than what you are dealing with at the present time, even the seemingly bad.

Accepting Life's Challenges With Love

Speaker 0 8:04

Why? Because we know that God runs this world. We know that God knows good and bad, the ultimate good and the ultimate bad. He is what creates all of that. He knows your past, present and future. He knows the decisions that you're going to make. Now you're going to ask well, if he knows, then what's the point? Different conversation, that's not what we're talking about here. Maybe one day we'll get to that. It's not the first time somebody's asked that question. But the point is he knows. You don't know. You're the one who's being tested. He knows full well, and so, at the end of the day, if you've passed the test enough times, that you've been through the tribulations, you've been through the roller coaster of life and you recognize that you come out on the other side unscathed. In fact, you come up on the other side better every single time. Maybe you don't recognize it at a time, maybe it takes a little while for it to register. Maybe, like me, it has to take a few years for you to have some opportunity to do some real self-introspection, or the opportunity comes up for you to really analyze it in a way that you haven't, and suddenly the light bulb goes off and you have hindsight and you go oh my God, that's unbelievable. And it finds its home and it makes its impact and its mark on you. It doesn't have to happen right away, but the point is it's a lifelong process.

Speaker 0 9:15

This is a lifestyle that we're talking about here. This is not a fad diet. This is not mathematics. This is not something that you've squared away. You've dealt with it, you put it in the top drawer and you forget about it.

Speaker 0 9:26

This is a lifestyle of figuring out that there is a God who created you, who loves you, who manages things better than you could ever dream of managing them. You think you do well at business. Step aside or, as they say, hold my beer. You want to see how businesses really run. Just look at he who creates and manages every transaction in this world trillions upon trillions of transactions every millisecond, is under his divine leadership and supervision and he manages it perfectly. I don't know about you, but we've never missed a season. The world has never shifted off of its axis. Right At the end of the day, there is no better entity to run your life and manage your concerns than the creator of the world.

Speaker 0 10:13

And here Rabbeinu Bachi is telling you that once you've experienced him enough, once you've been through the challenge enough and you've built that trust, you recognize that everything is absolutely perfect and you become relaxed about all of your financial affairs, all of your business affairs, everything that goes on in school, all of the setbacks that are hitting you that you think are the end of the world. You accept them with love because you know there is nothing better. My blessing for everybody is always that that should be the way that you walk around in this world. Could you imagine, just imagine, what life would be like if everybody walked around thinking that way, that everything is perfect, even the things I don't know or the things that I think are bad are really just seemingly bad, because I know that God loves me. I know everything is perfect. I've been around for 20, 40, 60, 80 years and I know and I've seen and I've lived it. It hasn't changed then and it's not about to change now. That's the class for today, my friends. We'll pick up tomorrow. Have an amazing day.