Living Intentionally

 Living Intentionally – Now I Know What My Wife Does For A Living

Are you the kind of person the fills up their gas tank the night before in anticipation of a road trip? Or do you only fill up when the warning sign pops up on your dashboard? Do you take the good things in life for granted are do you make a point to stop and get conscientious about these things as they occur?

Case in point; this weekend is the Annual Chabad Shluchos convention where Chabad Rebitzens have a chance to catch up with friends, learn best practices on a variety of topics with carefully chosen workshops led by experienced instructors and spiritually and socially fill up their emotional gas tanks so that they can return refreshed mentally and spiritually for another year of service to their families and respective communities.

On Fraida's way to NY she called and thanked me for filling up the gas tank etc. making sure that the car was road-ready. Meanwhile, she has been giving me gentle reminders of some of the things I’ll need to take care of while she is gone. Make sure these lights are on, take that out for supper and various other things so that I can “manage” while she is gone. Mind you, all these things that she is preparing to make this “manageable” for me are things that she does without thinking the other 362 days of the year.

Of course, I appreciate it, and of course it highlights - ok it shines a floodlight - on the work a mom often does that dads often don’t do and even more often don’t even realize that mom is doing it. 

Humbling as it is, it teaches us a powerful lesson beyond the all-important message of gratitude. It teaches us to stop and slow down and realize that things are happening for you constantly and just because you don’t stop to notice them doesn’t mean they are not happening. The point is, “living absently” means that while so many good things are happening, we are not cognizant of them and miss out on the opportunity to celebrate them and savor the kindness. 

“Living intentionally,” by contrast is a state of being where we are actively stopping and focusing on our blessings that Gd and His agents are providing us.

Sometimes, it is only in the absence of the goodness that we even notice how much goodness has been coming our way. Living intentionally means you don’t have to wait for it to be missing to notice the goodness.

The Rebbe, a visionary of the highest order realized that a previous prevailing mindset of relegating women to the background was not the way to advance Yiddishkeit. He realized that to ignore their central role to family life and communal life is to squander the greatest asset that our people have. To that end, he not only empowered them, encouraging them to take on huge projects and leadership roles in every arena, he celebrated them by taking a weekend a year to dedicate exclusively to them, insisting that everything be done at the highest quality and he’d dedicate private lectures just for them and more, so that they know they are wanted and more importantly needed.

One of the unintended consequence of this weekend was a wakeup call to those sleeping husbands that they ought to live more intentionally and be grateful for their spouse’s contribution everything good in their lives.

Have a good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman