This month was filled with opportunities for me to focus on “one step at a time.” Between toilet training my three-year-old, dealing with broken appliances, and making multiple trips to government
offices, I kept finding myself repeating mantras that would keep me in the moment and not wondering, What will be? How long will this last? and How will I manage?
I realized that the more I worked on being present and focused on the challenge in front of me, the more I developed my patience. I needed patience and stamina to wait out what could be a very long haul — while never losing sight of the ultimate goal.
Repetition. It has a bad rep. Think about it: when someone tells you you’re being repetitive, do you take it as a compliment? No one wants to hear the same shiur more than once, and no one likes listening to the same song for hours on end. New and fresh are always the most intriguing.
And yet review is highly praised in Judaism. The Gemara (Chagigah 9b) tells us that one who reviews his learning 100 times cannot be compared to one who reviews it 101 times.
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