PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS | Bolton Street Synagogue

Teaser:

I stopped the other day on the highway. The sky had turned black. The sun was blotted out. Great gusts of wind were whistling down the roadway. I pulled off the road and went into a nearby Starbucks. The barrista came over and asked me what I wanted to drink. I found myself nearly alone in this establishment. The patrons were few. Probably they had not yet decided to get off the road. The young lady, whose name was ‘Lil’ began to strike up a conversation. I learned that she had not always been a barrista. She was a widowed housewife raising three kids on her own. Overwhelmed as she was by the loss of her husband, she somehow found a way to make it through the nights and days of loneliness and distress. She sat alone and in the dark and contemplated a dark abyss from which she saw no escape.

When she thought she had reached the bottom, a light dawned in her head. She began to see that she did not have to solve all the problems at once. Remembering that she had responsibilities that kept here busy every day, she decided that if she could make it through one day at a time, she would feel better. And that is exactly what she did. I was dying to learn what became of her children. She told me that one was an astronaut, one a computer programmer, and one had become a grade school teacher. I thought deeply about this encounter. The rain stopped. The wind abated, the highway beckoned and so I thanked her and drove off. But I have truly never forgotten the conversation. It spoke to me in crystal clear tones. It said that if we look at one day and muster up enough courage and faith to sustain ourselves for one day, we might discover our inner strength will suffice to see us through.

I would like to quote the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882) who said, “The hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer” In similar fashion all we need to do to overcome adversity is simply to be brave just a bit longer. Perhaps we can then simply take the element of time and cut it up into manageable pieces. In that way we find the way to persevere.