You Don’t Know What You Got ‘til It’s Gone
Do you find that you appreciate things only after they’re gone? Do you look back over parts of your life wishing you had valued and cherished the things that are no longer there?
This week we have not one but two Zohar portions �?Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. When you put the two titles together, they create the phrase “after death they are holy.�?The Sages explain that this code reminds us that only after the Light has left do most of us realize that the Light was there in the first place.
As I reflected on this meaning and how it applies to us this week, I was reminded of a story one of our Student Support Instructors recently shared with me. The instructor has a student whose two elderly parents were both diagnosed with different forms of terminal cancer. The mother was given just months to live, but the father’s outlook was more hopeful. The instructor spoke to her student about how to support her parents spiritually and emotionally, and they scheduled an appointment to speak again. But the student never called.
When they finally connected, the student informed her instructor that both her parents passed away - within a week of one another. Her dad’s health took a turn for the worse, and he died unexpectedly. Not three hours later, her mother also become drastically ill and was rushed to the hospital.
On that day the hospital was overcrowded, and they couldn’t find a bed for the mother. “Coincidentally,�?the only available bed was the one recently vacated by her father.
Her mother died six days later, in the same bed, in the same room, in the same hospital. Both were buried at the same time.
The fact that they chose not only the same spiritual window but also the same physical portal through which to leave this world told me that these two individuals were soul mates. This is a rare occurrence. According to the Zohar, the chances of two halves of the same soul finding each other in any given lifetime are one in a million.
Here you have two “regular�?people living a “regular�?life while the whole time they are, in fact, two powerful souls. And it took their deaths for us to see this.
For me, this story reinforces an important lesson: recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary. We have so many blessings in our lives that fulfill our existence, but we’re not aware of these spiritual treasures because our fulfillment leads us to complacency. We take important things for granted. Consequently, we must lose something in order to awaken our desire for it.
Remember, the Light wants to give us everything, but we must have a desire for it. When we experience the pain of losing something dear to our hearts, a desire is awakened within us. But there is a far better way to activate all our desires for Light without having to lose something. It is called appreciation.
Every day this week I encourage you to focus on at least one thing in your life and imagine what life would be like without it. How would you feel if you lost your best friend, or you could no longer walk, or you lost your job? Appreciating them now will prevent you from having to lose them later.
All the best,
Yehuda
from the Kaballah Center
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