Dream or Accept Reality – Parshat  Korach

We are taught by dreamers to dream and by realists to accept reality. They are both right – we need to dream and we need to accept reality as is. The challenge comes when the dream flies in the face of reality. But don't  dreams always fly in the face of reality? There is a story about Walt Disney's brother who was giving a tour of the about-to-be-opened amusement park, Disneyworld, in Florida. One of the reporters said to him that it seemed a shame that his brother, Walt, couldn’t be there to enjoy the moment. Walt's brother answered that the reporter was mistaken. "Walt already saw this in his dream years ago. That’s how you can see it in reality today." So when do we 'accept' reality and when do we dream?

The 250 VIP's who joined Korach in his struggle against Moshe discussed in Parshat Korach,1 challenge us to understand what they were doing there. Were they a political party who joined Korach in his quest for power to be anointed or appointed family head? Did they also expect priesthood? The Netziv, in a lengthy explanatory proof, shows that their motivation was a personal matter of spiritual gain. They were not rebelling against Moshe, as Datan and Aviram did. Nor did they want power as apparently Korach did. They wanted to be closer to God. They just could not accept the reality of the situation that others were chosen to work in the Mishkan and they were not.

It is okay to want to grow. We all want to be better and more successful in our endeavors. We all want more options and opportunities. But sometimes, those opportunities are beyond us.

Is someone limited in growth, therefore, because their options are limited? I don’t believe that is true. If our options are limited, then we look for growth within the range of options that we do have.

A blind person, Tom Sullivan, writes of how he lives his life despite his blindness. He is a writer, golf player, husband, father, and skier (yes, skier) amongst many other things. He learned to not only live with his limitation but even grow. He says that he"cultivated a clear sense of my own purpose."2 He may be blind but he is able to see options.

When or how does one decide to accept fate and look for meaning within that situation and when does one decide to fight it? This may be one of the hardest questions we ever need to answer in life. And we are asked this question several times. Do we need to answer the same way every time? There may be some times that we will fight to move forward and others where we will work within the situation and make the best of it. Dreaming is important to our mental health. So is accepting reality. There is no instruction book to tell us when to do which. We try to make the most responsible decision possible based on a number of factors, including what seems to be the right thing to do at that moment - what your 'gut' tells you.3

We have to sleep with ourselves at night. Whatever we do, we need to be true to who we are. We are dreamers and we are realists. We are challenged to dream within our reality and in so doing we try to ensure that we can sleep well and have the strength to realize our dreams. 

Click here to read another logoParsha article on Korach(Get Involved)

Notes

  1. Bamidbar 16:1-2
  2. Tom Sullivan, As I See It: My View from the Inside Out
  3. Viktor Frankl speaks of this concept - reaching out for the one decision that is the right one for this moment - and calls this our conscience.

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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