May 31, 2023|י"א סיון ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Everything is Amazing and Nobody's Happy
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If your antenna is extended and you are paying attention, powerful and inspirational messages and reminders are being broadcast to us regularly. I was recently flying to New York when the woman sitting next to me grew increasingly frustrated that her television screen wasn’t working. She was forcefully pushing every button and practically slapping the screen trying to revive it.
The woman stopped a flight attendant walking by throwing her arms in the air, and with great exasperation announced, “Nothing is working!” The flight attendant stopped, looked at her, took a deep breath and said, “Nothing is working?! Ma’am, we are 33,000 feet in the air, flying in a metal box with wings that will get us to our destination in just a couple of hours. The plane is working just fine and isn’t that the main thing?” With that, she turned to continue the beverage and snack service but her words kept ringing in my ears.
Sure, it would be nice if the entertainment system was working. Certainly, it would enhance the trip if the Wi-Fi was functioning properly. But even when they aren’t, as long as the plane is working, that is the main thing, and we should never lose that perspective.
Several years ago, a I read the following observation of a comedian:
Everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy. We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on a generation of spoiled people that don't care. This is what people are like now: they've got their phones and they're like “Ugh, it won't…” GIVE IT A SECOND! It's going to SPACE! Can you give it a second to get back from space?? Is the speed of light too slow for you?!
I was on an airplane and there was high speed internet. That's the newest thing I know that exists. And I'm sitting there and they go “Open up your laptops you can go on the internet,' and it's fast, and I'm watching YouTube clips, I'm in an airplane! And then it breaks down, and they apologize that the internet's not working, and the guy next to me goes “Ugh, this is ridiculous.” Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only like 10 seconds ago!
Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they're telling you their story, and it's like a horror story. They act like their flight was a cattle car in the 40s in Germany. They're like, “It was the worst day of my life! First of all, we didn't board for like 20 minutes and then they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes! We had to sit there!” Oh really? What happened next? Did you FLY in the AIR incredibly like a BIRD? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight?! ... You're sitting in a chair in the SKY! People say there's delays. Delays? Really? New York to California in 5 hours. That used to take 30 years!
We are living in incredibly blessed times. We have comforts, conveniences, amenities, luxuries that our ancestors couldn’t dream of. Living with indoor plumbing, electricity, cars, planes, smartphones, FaceTime, Waze… each new thing is a game changer that transforms the quality of our lives in ways we don’t fully appreciate. With the advancements of medicine, we have not only longevity, but do you realize how routinely we recover from illness and survive some circumstances that previously would threaten life? Consider that in the 1600’s the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth was 4 percent. For every 100 births, 4 young women would die in the process. While bearing a child still carries risks, it is far, far safer than it was even just a hundred years ago.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not minimizing the pain of childbirth or the challenge of aching knees or hips, or even the frustration of slow Wi-Fi. However, as Stephen Covey writes in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing,” and the main thing is that the airplane is working, our heart is beating, a healthy child was born, and a mother survived. We certainly shouldn’t deny our feelings when something hurts or when we are injured physically, emotionally, or spiritually. We can lean into the pain, cry and even complain for a bit. But we must never lose perspective or context or allow our entire outlook and experience to be clouded or defined by what is missing, hurting, or frustrating, especially when the “main thing” is still working.
The gematria of the word modim, gratitude, is 100. The Kol Bo (Siman 122) writes that this is an indication of our obligation to give thanks at least one hundred times every day. Beginning with the gift of waking up in the morning, with each food and drink we can enjoy and ingest and with every successful trip to the bathroom, each day we stop ourselves one hundred times to say a beracha, to say thank you Hashem that with whatever else is going on, the main things are still working.
Towards the end of the Amidah, after listing all our requests, needs and supplications, we say Modim, Thank you Hashem. In the responsive Modim we recite during the repetition, we say modim anachnu lach, we are grateful to you…al she’anachnu modim lach, that we feel gratitude to you.
Among the things we must not take for granted and for which we should be grateful, is knowing the main thing is the main thing and being grateful when the main thing is working.