This Will Hurt...Smile!

There was a sign that used to be in my parent's kitchen that said "it is not happy people who are grateful, but grateful people who are happy" (I think the Kotzker may have said it). I try to live by this as often as I can. By nature I am a cheerful, optimistic person, but like everyone else, I have my bad days. On those days I try to think of everything I am grateful for - from the big things like my family and frumkeit, to the small things like hot coffee in the mornings and my guitar- and I find that it helps me cheer up.

Why am I talking about this now? Well I wanted to write a post about gratitude since I decided to create this blog and yesterday was my hebrew birthday (yud kislev). Every year at my birthday I look back at the year behind me and see how many things happened, how much I changed and I simply get overwhelmed by all the goodness that I find there.

So much has happened, from moving back home, spending time with my old friends and making new ones, to the birth of my niece and (last but most certainly not least) my marriage. It was easy to be grateful during these intense moments of happiness, but this past year also had it's fair share of hardships and hurdles. What should I think about those? 

Translated into hebrew, gratitude is "hakaras hatov". Hakaras hatov is not an exact definition, rather an idea. Literally translated, it means "recognizing the good". Gratitude is not always easy. Sometimes we are put into situations that are harsh and more then anything, we just want out. Simple gratitude is to be happy about receiving the obvious gifts. A deeper gratitude is being grateful for what appears to be a problem and not a present. 

I was once (okay, fine. Many times over) reading a book by Sara Yocheved Rigler. (I think she brings down this idea in her book "G-d winked".) She poses the common question: why do bad things happen to good people? I had heard this question raised in numerous places throughout the years, but I never heard or read of the answer she gave. 

She said; they don't. Everything is from G-d and G-d is all Goodness. Therefore something from Him is good by default. That doesn't mean suffering doesn't occur, it just means that suffering good, even if it is painful. Medicine can be disgusting, but we don't throw it away just because the taste is horrid. The bitterness is what can save us.

Likewise in life. We often don't realize that our worst moments are what sparks our greatest growth. Read any story from a recovered alcoholic. Almost every one will be along the lines of , "I knew I had to change when I hit rock bottom. Now I'm sober."

Everything is a gift from Hashem. 

If we never feel low, we will never feel the need to jump higher. 

And Hashem only gives us hardships because He wants to draw us closer.

I don't know about you, but this year I want to be grateful for all things- the pleasures and the pains.

Of Simpletons and Blessings

I was walking back from the makolet when I stranger asked to borrow my phone. She was a secular lady waiting at the bus stop with her preteen granddaughter. They wanted to call the bus number to see when their bus would be arriving. 

I wasn't in the mood to help them. My bags were heavy and it was hot out. I wanted to go home and unpack everything, clean up and do whatever else was on my to-do list for that day.

But, I figured, it would only be a minute and I had a phone and I would certainly want someone to lend a phone to me if I were ever to be in a similar situation...

So I gave it to her, and waited. She called and informed her granddaughter that the bus would be arriving in three minutes. 

As she handed the phone back to me, she smiled.

"Todah raba. Yesh lach children?"

I looked at her, confused. I understood what she said, but was thrown off by the one English word she threw in there. 

"You have baby?" She asked again, this time pantomiming holding an infant.

"Oh, no." 

Before I had the chance to tell her I was only married for two months, she spoke again.

"Well I give you a bracha that because you gave me your phone you should have children!"

I smiled. "Amen!"

We parted as unlikely friends; her hugging her granddaughter, and me still smiling.

***

I feel like there are a lot of points that could be taken out of this incident, but the one that stands out most to me that we can give more than we think. I don't know if that woman remembers what she told me, but I certainly do. She could have said "thank you" and left it that. It would have sufficed and I would have been grateful for her thanks. Only she decided to go a bit beyond that and gave me a bracha as well.  

She took a simple moment and decided to make it beautiful.

And I'm so grateful that she did. 

We often think that we are too simple to actually give a bracha to another.We feel like that's something a bit beyond us. We think "I'm not a gadol, I'm not a tzaddekes, I don't know what to do or say...''

What I learned from this woman is that it isn't beyond us at all. 

The gemara quotes Rabbi Chanina saying "One should never regard the blessing of an ordinary person as light in your eyes" (Megillah 15a). 

Every blessing we say has power.

It's something we all can do.