2007

I recently bought a hundred dollar garbage can. Now, now, I know what you're thinking. Believe me, my husband was thinking it too. But there was a very good reason that I splurged on this purchase. It was one of those pretty brushed-aluminum jobs, but what really made it worthwhile was that it was warrantied for ten years. So as I explained to my husband, it was only costing us a mere ten dollars a year in garbage can expenses - and that was clearly in our budget!

After a year of happy garbage can usage, the first one broke, so I brought it back to the store and exchanged it for a new one. Boy, was it a good year in the world of garbage can technological breakthroughs! This new can was not only pretty, it had a lid that was rigged to lower slowly enough to not make any noise when it shut. I kept opening it just to watch it close, and the work that I subsequently did around the kitchen was suddenly so much more pleasant without the sound of a clanking lid.

And then I thought about how those garbage can engineers were able to construct a lid that fought against the force of gravity (which, if you think about it, is a pretty formidable force), and yet we people often resign ourselves to not fight some of the internal forces that we ought to overcome. Maybe it's a bad habit, maybe it's a feeling you get every now and then that you should learn more or observe more Jewishly (but you weren't raised like that, so how could you possibly change?). We sometimes like to excuse our lack of change by calling on the expression, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." But friends, don't compare yourselves to a dog - compare yourselves to a garbage can!

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, I flocked (and mind you I normally pride myself on not flocking, but I had free babysitters available and was in the mood for something light) to see Disney's Enchanted over Thanksgiving weekend. If you're not one of the people who has helped this movie gross over $50.5 million so far, I won't spoil it for you, but a basic, non-spoiler theme of the movie is the tension between "happily ever after" and the cold harsh reality of well - the world. I was thinking about how all this relates to Jewish thought. Do we believe in happily ever afters or are we more realistic and think that the world has a lot of sorrow in it?

To answer simply - both. There's no way that Jews could deny that there's sadness in the world. As a people, we've experienced countless expulsions, pogroms, and exterminations. But unfortunate events don't just stop with the Jews. There is no country that's been free of war, no family immune to disease, no city without crime. So how could there possibly be a happily ever after on such a miserable planet?

The happy endings we've seen time and time again in Disney movies are similar to the way a child raised in a healthy, normal home sees the world. Everything is good. Everything is safe. Mommy and Daddy tuck him into a warm, cozy bed each night. Ignorance is bliss. But then the child grows up and starts to learn about about past atrocities and current injustices in the world. The parents whom he used to believe knew everything now, in his mind, know nothing! This pessimistic, adolescent approach to life, unfortunately is one layer of reality and we not only must be aware of the tragedies that take place, we must do whatever we can to prevent or fight them.

But this dismal outlook, despite the fact that many people get stuck in it, is not the highest level of understanding. While it's a level of knowledge above that of a naive child, it's not true knowing. Although our depressing history is undeniable, Judaism is very focused on happiness and joy. There is a famous chassidic saying that says, "It is a great mitzvah to be happy all the time!" Does such happiness come from one too many schnapps in an effort to escape? Not at all. This highest level of knowledge is completely sober, completely aware, but also completely trusting.

As human beings, our comprehension of good and bad is quite limited. If I asked you if having your chest sliced open sounded good or bad, you'd almost certainly reply bad! But if I gave you just a little more information and told you that your chest was being cut open so that you could have life-saving open heart surgery, you'd quickly change your answer to good. In both cases there was a chest being cut, but only when more information was provided did it become clear that the cutting was actually for the good.

And so that is the Jewish idea of happily ever after. We're not so simple to believe that everyone rides off into the sunset without ever having problems. We just recognize that although there are many tragedies and misfortunes in this world, that ultimately everything happens for the good, even if we can't always understand it.

Are three ears are better than two? Not really, but that didn't stop an Australian man named Stelios Aroadiou, who fashions himself an artiste, from surgically implanting an ear onto the inside of his left forearm last week. As demented as this sounds, I have come up with three lessons from Jewish wisdom, in honor of the number of ears now attached to Aroadious's body:

Lesson number one - just because you can, doesn't mean you should. This lesson can be applied to other areas of your life. Please keep it in mind.

Lesson number two - there are people, unfortunately, born every single day with deformities and birth defects. If you were blessed to have been born into a healthy, normal body - don't be an idiot and mutilate it. And mutilation extends beyond having ears implanted where they don't belong. Use your imagination on this one.

Lesson number three - while there is nothing inherently evil about implanting an ear onto one's arm, this man spent ten years pursuing this goal, trying to find a doctor crazy enough to perform such a surgery. Imagine waking up morning after morning for ten years thinking, "Dang, I still don't have an ear on my arm, I must do something about that!"

While working hard to achieve one's goals is usually a commendable thing, it is essential that a person take an honest look at the dreams he is chasing after to see if they have any inherent value. To make sure they actually matter. Because like our bodies, the time we are given in this world is precious and should be treated accordingly.

And what will become of our three-eared friend? He apparently wants to add a Bluetooth transmitter and a tiny microphone to his new ear, so that people "can listen to what my ear is hearing." Guess what, buddy - your ear is hearing exactly what's inside your head - nothing!

This blog was originally published on Modestly Yours: Perhaps because I have a full enough first life, it was only over the weekend that I first learned about an online game called "Second Life." For those of you who have also not had the privilege of hearing about this fairly new phenomenon, Second Life is an online 3D digital world where you create a virtual version of yourself called an avatar (not that it has to resemble you, or actually have anything in common with you at all) and get to live in a fantasy world with eight million other registered users. Now, there are a plethora of obvious questions as to why so many adults would waste so much time in their real lives creating a world that doesn't actually exist and playing pretend with people whom they will never actually know. But the Wall Street Journal article that I read over the weekend raised an even more disturbing question: Is a married man who marries another woman on Second Life cheating on his real-life wife? The article profiles a 53-year-old man named Ric Hoogestraat who's been married to his wife Sue for seven months. But there's another woman in his life. Although he's never actually met her and hasn't even ever spoken to her on the phone, their relationship has gotten pretty intimate in Second Life. Reports the Wall Street Journal: They own two dogs, pay a mortgage together and spend hours shopping at the mall and taking long motorcycle rides. This May, when Mr. Hoogestraat, 53, needed real-life surgery, the redhead cheered him up with a private island that cost her $120,000 in the virtual world's currency, or about $480 in real-world dollars. Their bond is so strong that three months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife. If you want to be thoroughly disturbed and give yourself a reason to throw out your internet router, I suggest reading the rest of the article. This Ric Loserstraat can spend fifteen hours a day in this land of make-believe--and when he's "playing," he is completely unaware of the real world that continues to exist around him. He literally doesn't talk to, interact with, or spend any time with his real-life wife! But he tells her not to worry about his fantasy marriage because it's only a game. In the Torah, the tenth commandment forbids us from coveting our neighbors' house, spouse, and possessions. Even if we don't act on our desires, the message is loud and clear: dreaming and wishing and wanting something that is not ours is very dangerous in its own right. And that, I think, is what makes this whole Second Life phenomenon so disturbing. It's not just another addiction, as someone commented on this blog. It's not just that Mr. Hoogestraat is ignoring his real life wife, indifferent to her pain, sharing intimate moments with another woman. It's that he's coveting a wife--and a life--that is not his. And to waste a real life dreaming about a make-believe one, now that's a sin.