Cut Through All The Stuff - Parshat Vayigash

We sometimes have so much stuff that’s happening to us or around us that it can become overwhelming to deal with. It can even be one particular issue that is so emotionally laden with baggage that it demands all of our energy just to function normally while dealing with this issue. How, in fact, do we find that ability?

It is, therefore, fascinating to imagine what Yaakov felt at the moment, when, after 22 years of mourning his son's disappearance, he is told that his beloved son, Yoseph, is still alive and well.1 In fact, I can barely begin to fathom it. There must have been a myriad of questions flooding Yaakov's mind. How to swim through all that?!

And yet, he cut through all the extraneous stuff and declared: "My son Yoseph is still alive!" That is what mattered most. He didn’t care at that point about anything else. It didn’t interest him about the glory he achieved, the rank he reached, the wealth and power he acquired or even how he got there. In Parshat Vayigash it just says, my son is alive, let me go see him. That’s the bottom line. Rabbi Hirsch adds that the other stuff is good. It was nice to hear all the other things that Yoseph achieved; but it's just window dressing. It was enough to simply know that Yoseph was alive.

We've often heard that when someone you know is in a car accident, you don’t ask about the condition of the car but rather first about the person - even if it's your own car.

Or a story similar to that of a woman I worked with. Her house was burning down and she ran screaming from room to room to make sure her kids were all out, and by so doing, saved their lives. Her maternal sense of caring meant more to her than self-preservation. That gave her the courage to behave as she did. Deep down, she knew what mattered most and what meant the most to her.

Our innate search for meaning can help us cut through stuff that is external.2

Yes, Sometimes it can be overwhelming and sometimes we need to feel overwhelmed. It is part of our humanity. Yet for those issues in our life which truly have meaning to us, we can often cut through all the other stuff that doesn't really matter…and hook in to what really does.

 

*Click here to read another logoParsha post on Vayigash

  1. Bereishis 45:26-8
  2. Our own search for meaning, according to Dr. Viktor Frankl, is the prime motivator in our lives and gives us courage and strength to live.

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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