Last Friday while driving to Sudbury after a visit to Cape Cod, the red battery light went on and the odometer went down to 0 mph despite the fact that I was going at least 60 mph. In seconds, all the other dials and lights in the car were flashing or flying all over the place and it was obvious that we have a problem so we pulled into a service station in North Pembroke.
As we waited for Triple AAA to arrive I explained to my kids that besides the fact that we have a mechanical problem, the fact that we ended up in this specific place as part of our journey must be for a reason, and as a result we should do something good and meaningful while we are hanging out. We then studied something together and made alternative plans for Shayna and the kids to return to Sudbury with my brother-in-law in a different car.
Eventually, Triple AAA came but they couldn’t help us, as the Alternator was the problem so we would have to get towed instead, which meant another hour of waiting. As I waited with my father-in-law for the next hour and chatted together, we noticed an old lady who had pulled into the gas station and was in obvious distress. She came out the car and had a very hard time walking and looked very overwhelmed.
We quickly approached her to try and help her, and it turned out that she had hit a curb and had ruined one of her tires, but had no phone with which to call Triple AAA and get help. She was very relieved when we called Triple AAA and made sure she was fine and felt okay and knew that help was on the way.
As an aside, after ordering AAA for herself we asked the operator to check on the status of our Tow Truck and she said that the order had been cancelled as the guy went to the Gas Station in the next (wrong) town and we weren’t there (obviously). She ordered a new Tow Truck but it was going to take forever so we ended up using the AAA guy who came to help the lady, to help us close our windows and door which were stuck and then left the key for the car to get towed.
In other words if we wouldn’t have called for help for the lady we would have been waiting for who knows how much longer and perhaps would have been in a bigger bind with getting home in time for Shabbat.
A Takeaway Lesson
Each day in our morning prayers we bless G-d for “directing the steps of man” meaning that we recognize that the various places where we end up in life on any given day, are all in a certain way connected with a Divine plan and purpose. It is then our job to make sure that we make each experience and stay, a meaningful one and one that helps bring purpose and improvement to the place, the people in that place and of course as a result to ourselves too in the process.
This theme is expressed as one of the ideas we read about in this week’s Torah portion which describes the list of forty two places where the Jews camped throughout their forty years in the desert when they left Egypt. Instead of referring to the places where they camped as the encampments, it refers to them as the forty two journeys. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of the time spent in the desert was actually living in these forty two places and not physically travelling and moving about between the places.
Chassidic Teachings explain, that a very powerful point is being conveyed here, and that is that the journey from Egypt to the Land of Israel is not just about simply leaving the borders of Egypt and arriving in the confines of the Holy Land. Rather each one of the forty journeys that the Jews took in the desert were all a part of a spiritual journey and process in which they steadily grew, improved and accomplished various objectives, which in turn prepared them for arriving in the Land of Israel.
Some of the forty two places had setbacks including major ones, some had tragedies, some had great accomplishments and significant events and some had important moments that helped the Jewish people bond together and grow in a manner befitting G-d’s expectations.
At least on a superficial level, not all the locations seems to indicate progress towards their goals, yet the Torah calls them journeys instead of encampments to teach us that in fact every one of those places were in a certain way part of the journey and spiritual progress that the people needed to go through to prepare them for entering the land of Israel.
In life too, not every place we are in, always seems connected to our destiny or purpose, sometimes it is simply a vacation, sometimes it is breaking down on a highway, sometimes it is in our workspace and sometimes it may be when we find ourselves in the midst of s setback or crisis. Instead of looking at every one of those moments as random experiences and physical locations, we can look at them as all being part of a journey to help us fulfill our own potential and to help make the world around us a better place.
Such a perspective will help us not only deal with the current location or challenge, it will also open our eyes to new opportunities and potential, which will most definitely make the experience easier and better yet, more productive.
Life Lessons Learned;
1. Get your Car Serviced Periodically
2. Have a good AAA Membership
3. Look at each situation and destination as a unique opportunity and part of our life journey.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel