Each of our children has a soft fleecy lovey. The three-month-old isn’t quite old enough to fully appreciate its magical comforting powers, but it means quite a bit to his older sister. Her lovey is her regular bedtime companion. In addition, when my daughter is sad or scared, she’ll ask for her lovey.
Bad eating habits, destructive relationships, poor time management – how do we get into these cycles, and more importantly, how can we get out of them? Idioms like “Fool me once . . . ” and “If at first you don’t succeed . . .” are supposed to spur us into action to break these patterns.
To this rabbi, last year’s Starbucks red cup “controversy” (because these days even a few tweets count as a controversy) was completely baffling. The complaint among a small number of customers was that Starbucks had lost the Christmas spirit, since they had replaced the previous festively decorated cup with a solid red design.
Some moments in life leave you stuck, standing still, unable to move forward (or in any direction for that matter). I felt a literal version of this when it was time to leave the grave after we buried my father. I was stuck. I just stood there.
In January of this year, TIME magazine published an article about the terrible things that happen to lottery winners. The article quotes a study that found that 70% of people who come into large sums of money lose it only a few years later. The author goes on to cite several examples of worst-case scenarios involving big ticket winners, including bankruptcy and even murder.
Truthfully, this was a difficult morning to wake up to. I started the day with a lot of questions. Is my country safe and secure? Are our savings and investments stable? Will my 3-month-old son be denied health care? Will my daughter still be able to freely belt out the same Hebrew songs many of you learned growing up in this very building?
I’m sure by this point in the election cycle, you’ve heard plenty of people from all political persuasions talking about the dilemma of choosing the “lesser of two evils.” Though the label “evil” might be intended as hyperbole, that doesn’t change the fact that our two major parties nominated candidates who are viewed unfavorably among a significant number of people, even from within their own parties.
