Depth of Focus | Rabbi Shlomo Farhi

I want to draw your attention to something interesting. Can you see me? Am I in focus? How about behind me? Can you see what's going on clearly? You can't. You know why? The camera is set to a certain level of depth perception. I'm in focus. That's not. The pasuk gives a very interesting wording all over. It says it in singular cases, in plural cases, but you might recognize the format. Right? If I lift my eyes, so I'm looking at you, obviously. Why does the pasuk need to say וישא עיניו וירא and he lifted his eyes and he saw? We find it by Avraham, we find it by the Shvatim. What's the pasuk telling us? It's telling us something very interesting. It's saying that you could lift up your eyes and be looking at something, but not actually see it, not actually be focused on it. You see, the brothers, when they lifted their eyes, what were they hoping to see? A solution to their problem of who to sell Yosef to. Avraham lifts his eyes because he's desperate for a guest. So he lifts his eyes and he focuses to see what he is seeing. What this tells us, my friends, is something incredible. You're walking in the street and it's impossible to be able to not see things. So what do you do? You know what the answer is? You look, but you don't see. Sometimes, even if you've lifted your eyes, you don't have to focus on something. And the lack of focus leaves something blurry, leaves something unseen in a certain sense. So, my friends, sometimes you're in a position where you can't go another way. The Gemara tells us if a person has no choice but to go on this road and they keep their eyes closed, he's called a Tzaddik. A person has a choice to go in another road [but goes, anyway], and they keep their eyes closed, he’s called a Rasha, because he's put himself in a state of סכנה. He might make the wrong choice. My friends, so many of us have no choice. We're the Tzaddik people. We're walking in the street, we have to go down here. There's no other route. What do you do, practically? You know what the answer is? Even if you're looking, don't look. Have you ever been facing someone but completely can't see them because you're spacing out and they're waving to you and all of a sudden you're like, oh! Because you were thinking about your problem, about your business, about a Chidush Torah, about whatever else. And suddenly your eyes focus and you see the thing that was there? That is an incredible technique a person can use in a moment where they have no other option to be able to not see something that they don't want to see.