Exactly on My Way | Rabbi Meir Simcha Sperling

So there I was, standing outside of Kever Rachel. It was late at night. I had missed the previous bus and the next one was in quite some time, so I decided I'm going to hitch home. A few minutes later, a friendly Jewish man picks me up and he welcomes me into his car and he asked me where I was headed. So I told him: I'm going home. I'm going to Machal. He said: Oh, very nice. I live in Ramot. I will take you home. And we started schmoozing. And as we got closer, after a few minutes, I told him, I said: Listen, you already changed your direction for me. You're already going out of your way. Do me a favor. Leave me on Route 1, which is just a few minutes walk from my house. Do not take me straight to my door because it’s out of your way and already it's late at night. You're doing me a huge favor, anyways. He responded: No, no, no. Your house is actually right on my way. To which I responded: Well, you don't live in Machal, so it's not really the direction you're going and it is going out of your way. You can tell me you want to do a Chesed, but don't say it's right on your way. It's not right on your way. He then said something to me which I will never forget. He said, You think my destination is my home? That's not my destination. My destination is Olam Haba. And taking you right to your door is exactly on my way. This Chesed will get me exactly where I want to go. And then I thought to myself, This powerful lesson, which can be applied in so many areas, can be a new weapon against the Yetzer Hara of Shmiras Einayim. Sometimes we're walking down the street and something comes up that we need to take our glasses off, or we need to look down, or we need to click the tally counter. We need to go out of our way a little bit. Sometimes the situation calls for us getting off the bus at a stop early or crossing the street, or maybe even changing our route. Some people even leave their house an hour earlier or an hour later to avoid rush hour. And perhaps we can mistakenly think that we're going out of our way. We are wasting time. It's going to take so much longer now. This is inconvenient. Rabosai, with a little thought and the proper perspective of what life is all about, we would know just how wrong we are. Our real destination, the whole purpose of life is to arrive at Olam Haba. That's really where we're trying to go. And that means that every time you look down, every time you turn it off, every time you look away, you're one step closer to your destination. Don't ever think that by following Hashem, you're going out of your way.