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"Wet slippers" - A (real) story about change. Fits well during the Omer - Rabbi Alon Anava

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Rabbi Alon Anava avatar
Rabbi Alon Anava

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[Music] but let me tell you a perfect example of something negative that happens something negative that happened to me and I could take it to the negative part and with all uh that will follow or how it was easily taken to something positive so a few days ago I went H to dip in the mik and it was Shabbat and I like dipping if I can as close as possible to shabbat not an hour before once I used to get ready for Shabbat two hours before and that has its Mala its virtue but it also I read in some books that dipping moments before Shabbat comes has a great H advantage so I went to the mik and as I'm dipping in the mik The Cleaner starts cleaning I'm the last one and I have my little slippers that I walk in and I they were on the side and he starts washing the floor and he starts spilling the the soap on my slippers and the uh not detergent the cleaning soap whatever it is why are you doing that so I got I'm in the Mig and I see that and I get upset why are you doing that either move the slippers or I don't know tell me I'll move and they're all wet and full of soap and and I got like I got for a few seconds upset I was about to tell him move them why' you do that I decided to completely ignore it and to continue with the dipping in the mik and uh and I was really trying not to get upset not to lose my patience and it some sometimes it's sometimes something this little throws you off and I got upset now and in my mind now I got my my the the slippers wet it's like flip-flops then when I went out I took them and and they were all wet full of soap so I had to wash the rinse them and wash them down and then when I turned them the other way I saw that the Bon was so dirty so but but with dirty that got stuck into the cracks and so I washed the slippers real good and and I were like oh now I have good clean slippers thank you cleaner for pointing out that I needed to clean the slippers and I looked at the situation and I was like I was literally in the center of with option of getting upset either getting upset and not doing nothing but just being upset and I'm sure you can relate with that that something gets you upset you don't say anything about it you keep it in your heart and then you get more upset and you don't want to say anything cuz you don't want to you know create a problem or a scene and you get even more upset and the whole day it's in your mind and it's in your heart till you let it go somehow either you tell it to somebody either you let go or either you flip on the person that you got upset so I could have stayed upset and it would bother me for an hour or two the slippers the soap the mik or I could have G even gotten more upset and tell the cleaner why' you do that he could have answered back an argument will start I don't know where how it will go that's why our sages say who is a wise person who can see what's going to be born of the situation that you see I see where it's heading and you stop there but instead of going to that direction I saw something negative that affected me and I decided how can I take the something negative and transform it into something positive is accepting I accepted that that was a message from Hashem in a very nice subtle way your shoes are dirty clean them I wouldn't think of that and I was like look how sometimes AEM dis PES you out of situation that initially is annoying you remove that feeling away see the potential that can come out from the negative situation Bingo that's it I got my shoes clean that's it I didn't get upset at the cleaner a win-win situation how did he say before that's revealing the or in s that is the that's the or and sof that instead of being B and reduced in my spiritual level from something so minor then it's negative then that thing is negative yeah cuz it brought me to a pit that I either used foul language I said something wrong whatever but the taking the positive out of the negative situation is saying okay what can I derive positive out of now and in this situation the example with the dirty slippers I'll clean it so I got clean shoes so almost any situation you can look for the positive part in the negative and uh bring the positive out unfortunately this is not going to work in any situation because when you Shalom experience something that is beyond uh I don't want to give too many examples but Shalom you use your own imagination that some very bad SC a person is lose a a loved one or like the horrors that we saw in the last few months that I might find hard to find something positive when a person loses a child Shalom people are losing soldiers are dying every day there is something positive but every situation has to be looked very very detailed I will say something bold by that in any situation you can pull out something negative but I will choose to say it in parenthesis because many people will come and say how can you get something negative something positive out of that that I lost my child I this happened that happened I don't want to say too many things but nevertheless a smart person Rises when the stress comes or a destruction or some bad event if you are smart with the right tools that's where you rise from that's what I spoke about in the class before as our nation we know how to run From the Ashes whether it was the Holocaust whether it was whatever our nation has a gift that we know how to rise from ashes from the bottom if you apply that in your life any negative situation in your life you know how to make it a jumping board to something positive not so easy cuz in many of the situations it's very hard to see and I'm now tagging all the horrors and the atrocities we saw in the last three months very hard to see from that where Something Good Can Sprout but I can tell you that I can already see in some of the people that I know you see the positiv positive Sprouts something positive is coming so having the attitude that something can be negative from sham that's already wrong hasem doesn't send anything negative we perceive it as something negative and a thinking that something negative in my environment can affect me no it can if you give it the option but I can live in the worst environment and not be affected because of how I lead my life or I can lead my life in the highest way and be affected by by the surroundings depends on the individual it really depends how I accept energy from around me but if you know how to block it anything negative around you should not affect you if it affects you the problem is with you not you I'm not I'm looking at you I'm not pointing at you but H to summarize this point is that almost in any average negative things that happen in your life stop and do do your your pinpoint focusing to find what can I take out of this pile of junk and make something positive out of it and you know an example for that is there's a story in the talud about a certain Sage that he he used to sell wine that was his business and one time he had I think it was a thousand barrels that got spoiled that's you talking here parasa for two three years so he was a sage first of all what did he do Chua let me see let me what's called look through my actions maybe I did something maybe I did something wrong that caused this problem and he found that he didn't pay his workers on time okay he missed one of the workers he didn't pay him on time which is uh uh not permitted by by the Torah he fixed the wrongdoing and uh and then happened a miracle all of his wine that went bad became vinegar and he said okay I lost all my money and so forth but once he corrected the wrong doing that he did he found out that on another side another town in the country they didn't have any vinegar at all there was a s shortage and he was the the only supplier for the entire region for vinegar and needless to say made a lot of money so in any situation that appears to be extremely negative cuz he already was counting his losses for two three years of of earning first of all he it helped him reflect and do Chua and figure out what he did wrong but more than that the negative that seemed very negative suddenly became a potential and I don't remember the story exactly I think he made like three times the amount that he was supposed to make because that he was the only one who had the vinegar so Hashem can make something sweet out of anything bitter it all depends in the individual I give you clay you do whatever you want with it you can make something gorgeous and you can make a stone and kill somebody with it you choose what you make with the material that God gives you God gives you something negative for you to turn it into something positive [Music]