A Soulful Journey

  A famous writer was in his study. He picked up his pen and began writing: ** Last year, my gall bladder was removed. I was stuck in bed due to this surgery for a long time. ** The same year I reached the age of 60 and had to give up my favorite job. I had spent 30 years of my life with this publishing company. ** The same year I experienced the death of my father. ** In the same year my son failed in his medical exam because he had a car accident. He had to stay in the hospital with a cast on his leg for several days.  ** And the destruction of the car was a second loss. At the end he wrote: Alas! It was such bad year!! When the writer's wife entered the room, she found her husband looking sad and lost in his thoughts. From behind his back she read what was written on his paper. She left the room silently and came back shortly with another paper on which she had written her summery of the year and placed it beside her husband's writing. When the writer saw her paper, he read...

“Sometimes people are terribly distressed but have no one to whom they unburden themselves.  If you come along with a happy face, you cheer them and give them new life…Wear a smile.  The gift of life will be yours to give.”   - Rebbe Nachman

“Itticha gotsa g’chin v’tilchosh la , Rav Pappa said to Abaye “if your wife is short bend down  and whisper to her.” Baba Metsia 59a  

"Woe unto the heart that is not broken,"  - Aryeh Cohen

A father was arguing with his son for wanting to marry a woman of whom he did not approve. “I can find you a girl who is rich, young and beautiful.” “No, father, I want to marry Sarah.” “And why do you insist on marrying Sarah?” “We are in love with each other, father, and I believe she will make me happy.” “Well, and if she makes you happy – what good will it do?” Cute story with a powerful truth.   It is true so people are good companions for life’s journey but no one should make us happy or sad.  We find it within ourselves.

Prophecy will not come to a person by means of weeping or jesting. Only through joy, as it is written: “But now you bring me a minstrel? It happened at the hand of the Lord came to him.” (2 Kings 3:15) – Pesachim 117a Joy brings many gifts.

Hanoch of Aleksandrov explained how this world can be compared to a wedding hall. "A man came to an inn in Warsaw.  In the evening there floated music and sounds of dancing coming from the adjacent house. "They must be having a wedding," he thought. The next evening he heard the same sounds and the next evening as well. "How can there be so many weddings in one family?" he wondered. The innkeeper answered, "That house is a wedding hall.  Today there is one wedding and tomorrow there will be another." "It is the same with this world," told Rabbi Hanoch.  "People are always enjoying themselves.  But some days it is one person and other days it is another.  No single person is happy all the time."  -Francine Klagsbrun

Rabbi Nachman Teaches us as follows: "Good thoughts come from the Good inclination, negative thoughts come from the evil inclination"   Dough will become 'Chametz' when you don't touch it for 18 minutes. Within this period of time, you can bake Matza out of it. If 18 minutes pass, it is considered as Chametz and you can't bake Matza out of it.   Same thing with our thoughts.   A negative thought should never stay too long in our heads. Push it out, kick it out, replace it with any kind of other good thought. Rebbe Nachman teaches us that we can only have one thought in our heads at a time. A bad thought comes quickly replace it with a different thought, a beautiful nature scene, the gravesite of a Tzaddik or the face of a loved one or Tzaddik.   Don't let it ''chametz'' your brain, and it doesn't have to take more than a millisecond to reject it.   If you'd feel a little drop of cyanide on your tongue, how fast would you try to ge...

There are three ways to mourn: to weep, to be silent, and to sing.  The first way to mourn is to weep: even if our tears are for ourselves, for our ache of loneliness, for our pain of loss, they are still sacred, for they are the tears of love.  But we may  weep only if we do not weep too long, only if the spark of our own spirit is not quenched by a grief too drawn out, only if we do not indulge ourselves in the luxury of grief until it deprives us of courage and even the wish for recovery.  The second way to mourn is to be silent: to behold the mystery of love, to recall a shared moment, to remember a word or a glance, or simply at some unexpected moment, to miss someone very much and wish that he or she could be here.  The twinge lasts but a moment, and  The third way to mourn is to sing: to sing a hymn to life, a life that still abounds in sights and sounds and vivid colors; to sing the song our beloved no ...

  "Find a happy place, find a happy place, find a happy place..."   - from "Finding Nemo"

It is said that once William Randolph Hearst suggested to novelist Dorothy Parker that her short stories were too sad. "Mr. Hearst, there are two billion people on the face of the earth, and the story of not one of them will have a happy ending." The story of our lives is always decided by the one who lives the tale.  It may interpreted by others but only we determine how we live it.