Dear friends and neighbors, our beloved Port Washington community,
I hope and pray everyone is staying home and staying safe, as we go through this unprecedented time of challenge and confusion.
Here’s a silver lining to consider. Perhaps one of the messages G-d is sending us is that we should stop and smell the roses.
We all talk about how fast “life passes us by” and how “we’re so busy making a living that we don’t have a chance to live…”
In 2011, an Australian nurse by the name of Bonnie Ware published a book with an intriguing premise. After several years of working with palliative care, she spent considerable time in the company of patients during their final weeks on earth, as they took stock and reflected on their lives. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at that time, and how we might learn from their wisdom.
Listening to her patients, she began recording some of the more striking lessons she learned, first in a blog, and eventually in a book entitled “The Five Regrets of the Dying.” The people invariably spoke of the realization that they should have spent more time with the family, or wishing they had stayed in touch with their friends. Above all: “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
We all pay lip service to these ideals; few have the courage or strength of character to actually prioritize accordingly.
The unprecedented time we are currently living in, (I keep pinching myself to see if I’ll wake up… I know this can’t be a dream because even my imagination couldn’t have come up with this stuff… it’s the stuff of fiction movies… but I digress) gives us all the opportunity to re-evaluate. We’re being forced to press the pause button on our fast-paced, fragmented and distracted existences, and to take some time for those things we always wanted to do but we just weren’t able to get around to.
We’re all seeing our lives through an entirely different lens.
To borrow a phrase from time management, we’re focusing more on the important things, and less on the urgent ones. Things that heretofore defined our lives and what we did with our time each day are at a complete standstill; those things we always knew we should be doing but couldn’t get around to are suddenly taking center stage.
Many couples are finding renewal in relationships that were long stale, suddenly jolted back to life in this powerful moment of truth. Parents are looking into the eyes of their children, listening to them, talking to them.
I strongly recommend that we each take some time for personal prayer each day, especially now. Read some of the Psalms. Choose whichever prayers you connect to.
And then close your eyes and offer up your personal prayerful words or thoughts to our Father in Heaven, one on one.
Apparently G-d wants our attention. Take a few minutes each day, privately, just you and your G-d. Try this and see how soothing and therapeutic it can be. You’ll remind yourself that all is not lost and we are never alone!
I also suggest that each of us make it our business each day to reach out to five people in the community just to say hi and see how they’re doing. At times like this we need each other. Lifting up another is the most uplifting thing we can do for ourselves.
And most importantly, stay home and stay safe. If you are over the age of 65, have a compromised immune system, or have experienced any medical condition which makes you a high risk, you should absolutely not be leaving your home.
Don’t risk it. Please reach out to us and we will arrange for volunteers to shop for you and leave the items at your front door. We are offering this service to anyone in the Port Washington community, regardless of your faith or affiliation.
We need to be there for each other at times like this. Email: info@chabadpw.org and we will be happy to arrange this for you. If you are under the age of 55, in good health and willing to volunteer for the above mitzvah, please email us as well.
My own prayers during these difficult and unprecedented days have been focused around a few things. I pray for complete healing for those who are ill, some gravely ill, some of whom I know personally from within the international Chabad community.
I pray for good health for the rest of us. I pray for this pandemic to end quickly. I know this prayer is on all of our lips and hearts. I firmly believe G-d will answer it real soon; something will emerge that will allow the sunshine to shine through the clouds so that things can get back to normal, both in terms of health as well as the economy.
I also pray that we, the family of humanity, take along with us the life-changing lessons we’ve learned; I pray we don’t revert back to our old “normal” the moment things normalize.
We’ve been sobered up and have matured greatly over the past couple of weeks. I hope that after this challenge is over society will have changed for the good. For good…
Stay home. Stay safe. Stay positive. As our beloved Rebbe, the legendary Lubavitcher Rebbe so often said: (in Yiddish): Tracht gut vet zein gut; which means: Think good & it’ll be good. Positivity and optimism are the truest signs of faith, and they yield positive results!
Remember to wash your hand – and in whose hands you are!
Rabbi Shalom M. Paltiel
Chabad of Port Washington
