Who knows? Perhaps it can all be traced back to early sustained exposure to Shabbos afternoon Pirchei groups or some other long-forgotten traumatic experience. What I do know is that my mind is perpetually set on mashal-sensing mode and with no discernible way to reset it either. Everything I see and hear is at risk for being perceived in my mind as a rich juicy parable for some deep truth about life and Torah. It happens unthinkingly automatically and — these days — silently.
This is something you see that as the appliance warning labels put it “one should not attempt at home ” at least once the kids hit a certain age. I clearly recall one particular trip taking my youngest son back to yeshivah when I began to wax eloquent on a newly discovered lode of scintillating — I thought — insight: the innocent-looking GPS. I proceeded to mine this rather benign machine for its glaringly obvious moral implications oblivious to my son’s level of interest.
“Do you see how the GPS parallels Hashem’s Hashgachah allowing man to take the lead even if it means making mistakes along the road of life a perfect illustration of b’derech she’adam rotzeh leileich bah molichin oso? Hashem just recalculates using man’s own mistakes to get him to move toward what Hashem knows is best for him.” Silence from the next seat. “And wow what a great lesson in how to react to those who ignore us. We ask for its guidance and then when we do just the opposite it takes no offense reacting in a calm manner with just one word — ‘recalculating.’ What savlanus….” Prolonged silence.
Suffice it to say that I’ve since come to realize that what worked wonders so many decades ago in Pelham Parkway Pirchei as I sat spellbound by the Chofetz Chaim’s classic tales isn’t necessarily transferrable to other times and places. Maybe it’s a parent-kid thing. Maybe it’s that I’m not the Chofetz Chaim. Maybe GPSs and dogs and mailboxes — mailboxes?! — aren’t the stuff of meshalim. Or maybe it was something in the Mayim Chaim soda way back when.
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