Some Things Don’t Need Reasons
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Some Things Don’t Need Reasons
By Harav Y Reuven Rubin Shlita
“Attention, please, passengers of flight 81 to New York, scheduled for 10:00 a.m. departure. We are sorry, but this flight will be delayed. We will bring you further details as soon as we have them. Thank you for your patience.”
When I heard the announcement, I allowed myself a small smile, because it was now 10:45, and it was quite apparent that we were delayed.
Such is the nature of today’s world. You run to catch a plane, only to sit in the departure lounge. No matter how careful your calculations, you will either get there too early or ten minutes late.
With us were some three hundred other souls, all waiting to get on the same flight and all seemingly calm and patient — that is, until the slight delay stretched to hours.
People started to get fidgety. They had other flights to catch, meetings to get to, people to see. Time moved on relentlessly. People were now walking around, some nervously. Most had been at the airport in good time to catch their flight (seven o’clock), and so they had probably gotten out of bed at five. The day was sliding past them, and they were supposed to be in New York by now.
No further information was forthcoming except that something needed fixing on the plane and parts had been called for. Soon we were making friends with our fellow sufferers.
It’s a wondrous thing. You get on a plane with three hundred strangers and never stop to think who or what they are about. Every one of these people has a story to tell and is there for reasons you can’t even imagine. Usually, when things go according to plan, you fly with this diverse community, get off the plane and get on with your life. You don’t get much of a chance to talk to anyone — well, perhaps the guy next to you (the one who keeps taking your armrest), but that’s about it. But when things get a bit strained, everyone starts talking, sharing his tale of woe, his particular reason why he must get to his destination on time.
“Attention!” the loudspeaker squawked (am I the only one who can never understand what they say on those things, even though they say it in two languages?). “We are sorry to inform you that we have to cancel this flight. Please follow the directions of our service crew and claim your luggage. You will be given information on how to reschedule your flights to New York. Thank you for your understanding, and we hope you will fly again with us soon.”
These last words must have been read from some prewritten script that is handed out to all loudspeaker announcers when they are given the task of telling everyone bad news. I don’t really think I would want to fly again with them all that quickly, especially when taking into consideration the small fact that I never got off the ground with them.
We had been waiting for some five hours by now and were faced with the task of rebooking a flight to New York. It was now that some people well and truly lost it. Here differences in culture really came to the fore.
The New Yorkers were having none of it. They wanted answers: What’s wrong? Why not get us another plane? What do you mean, we should rebook?
You could boil an egg on some of the heat these folks were producing. One poor lost soul from the South started crying. “They told me to go home and come back tomorrow,” she wailed. “I don’t have a home here. I want to go to my home in South Carolina.” This was accompanied by two huge teardrops sliding down her well-fed cheeks.
Meanwhile, the English did as Englishman always do. They shrugged their shoulders, sought out their baggage and dutifully got on yet another line in order to find a way out of their predicament.
In all this chaos, my rebbetzin and I had the privilege to meet a heimishe family who was returning to New York after celebrating a family simcha in Manchester. This unit consisted of a zeidy, a bubby and one daughter (a mother of six, who was anxious to get home to her sheifelach). As is always the case in such situations, we became almost family to each other as together we tried to help each other figure out what to do.
The zeidy was a special neshama, a Yid who had witnessed Kristallnacht and lived through the Holocaust. He wasn’t easily disturbed, though he was in deep trouble. The fellow suffered from diabetes and now found himself without enough medication or food for what was now going to be a long, long trip.
His devoted wife and daughter were trying to sort things out, and all the while he was telling me about the tzaddikim he had met in Budapest during the war. This man had seen so much, and his bitachon, his faith in Gd, was rock solid. He was a virtual fountain of wondrous information, and one could see he lived his life as our Sages had taught.
We finally got everyone arranged on different flights. It turned out that everyone would be able to get to London via several different carriers, and then at 8:00 p.m. we would all be going on the same plane to New York. We had become a small yet determined team of warriors who had somehow weathered the storm.
When I arrived in London, my rebbetzin and I were met by our new friends, the zeidy and company. I found out that he had a daughter living in Manchester, and she had brought medication and food for him. Now, as we awaited the call to board the plane to New York, his wife pulled out a huge bag of specially cooked food for my rebbetzin and me. Their daughter had cooked this food especially for us, and soon we were sitting together in that departure lounge enjoying a fabulous repast complete with cold dessert and cake.
You might ask, “So what? Where’s the punch line, Rubin? When do you tell us that that other flight crashed, or because you were late such and such a mishap didn’t occur to you? Come on, tell us!”
The truth is that for me the greatest miracle is that I don’t begin to know what mishap I was saved from! And that’s the real point to all this. There are so many things that go on in our lives, and all the time Hashem watches over us. He sees us stumble around as if in a daze, and in truth a daze is where we live. We have no idea what forces are at play in our lives, what steps Hashem puts us through to keep us from coming to harm. We think we are in charge, when in fact we are far from it.
Every once in a while Hashem throws us into a situation that should teach us this truism. But sometimes we get so angry or worried that we forget Who runs this world. The experience is there, yet we miss the point. That is the greatest waste possible, because without learning what it is Hashem wants us to know, we will only come to relive the same anguish again and again. Each time we will miss the point, and the result will be more anger and more bitterness.
Shvigin, keeping still, is a great feat of strength, and if you can build yourself up spiritually to accept things as they come along, you will find that the result is a more positive you and a greater perspective of what is real in life.
Since I had a lot of time during this particular day, I thought about all this and about that zeidy whom I had met for the first time. He remained calm while all around him people fluttered with nervousness. He had seen how spiritual giants had faced real problems, not with talk, but with true faith. He had learned well the lesson that Hashem watches over us, and so he could be a pocket of calm in a blizzard of stress.
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