Operation Inspiration
When my wife asks me to do things, I ask her to send me a text message. Not because then I have proof that she only asked me to take out the garbage and not bring in the dry cleaning, but because otherwise I know I will forget. The same is true when I go shopping. I like to have a list. I prefer one big list with everything on it, not a bunch of notes with an item here and an item or two there, because I can forget to look at all the little lists.
It may sound surprising, but I need lists for other things too, like a ‘To Do’ list. I need the reminder to pay the insurance premium or go to the cleaners or whatever it is. When they’re done, I can cross them out, or mark them completed if they’re in electronic format. And sometimes, it’s not a list that I need to remember but something else very important.
As a writer, ideas may come to me at inopportune moments, like just before candle lighting time on Friday, or just after I’ve started Shemona Esrai. Well, at those times I’m somewhat out of luck, but other times, when an idea pops into my brain but I don’t have time to sit down at my computer, I will take out my phone and begin an e-mail to myself.
It may be a phrase I just heard someone use, or the place I was standing and the situation I was in when the thought struck me. I try to give myself enough details to get back to the moment and reexperience what I was feeling and thinking. If I have a good line for it, or an approach, I’ll add that in. This way, when I need to write an article, I can simply open my draft e-mails and find my topic!
That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. You see, sometimes, I don’t have that many epiphanies. Or I have them on Shabbos or Yom Tov or one of the aforementioned times when it’s not possible to write the e-mail. Then, I may end up without a ready topic. Which is what happened to me this time.
I got an e-mail from one of my publishers asking if my article was ready. I was shocked. I had totally lost track of the days (has that ever happened to you? Like maybe when you were in your forty-second month of a three-week quarantine?) I told him I’d see what I could come up with and opened up my e-mail. Now, with 679 draft e-mails (I wish I was kidding) you’d think there would have to be something there that I’d not yet written about. And yet, as I scrolled through the draft e-mails, I began deleting them one by one as I recognized that I’d already used them. Or they were for my Parsha sheet. Or they were just blank e-mails with no content that I started and for some reason said “save” to.
Or else, of course, they were shopping lists. One after the other I found lists for the supermarket or takeout store or whatever else and I paused to reflect on them. “Why was I buying THAT?!” Then I’d remember, “Oh yes… I needed it for my trip” or whatever else it was. It reminded me of a game I sometimes like to play in the store. Now, please don’t think me rude, but I often take stock of what people are buying and try to figure out why they’re buying it.
Say you see the person in front of you had a number of vegetables and some cheesecloth bags. You might figure they’re going to make soup. Alka Seltzer and Pepto? Someone has a tummyache. Maybe they have balloons, ice cream and cookies. Somebody’s having a party! And then there are the times when the things don’t go together at all, like: hair spray, shoe polish, poker chips, and a cheese Danish. You just guess that a lot of interesting things happen in that house.
I got to thinking that this would be a great tool for evaluating our lives. We should stop and ask ourselves what we’re putting in our carts. What kinds of things are important to me? What do I stock up on? And I don’t mean physical things alone.
I mean what is valuable to me. Is it kindness? Torah? Integrity? Mitzvos? These are the kind of things we exchange our time and money for so that makes them purchases. Chazal says a person’s values can be identified from the things he praises. It would follow that the things we simply “must have” qualify and can be very telling. What people “are looking for” in a shidduch is the same. Is being six feet tall a replacement for being sensitive and caring? Does a large bank account compensate for a large ego?
So, my thought for this week is: Look in your own shopping cart. See what you’re “buying” and what you can infer about yourself from those choice. You might be very surprised and come to realize that you’re not as savvy a shopper as you thought. Go ahead and make your lists, but check them twice, and make sure your choices are really nice.
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Amazon:
Operation Inspiration: Finding Meaning in the Mundane Paperback
