Two Views

Since the deposition last week, I have been fighting a nice wave of negativity. Baking didn't help. Ice cream didn't help. Chocolate helped a bit, but certainly not like usual. I have even had problems sleeping, despite being incredibly exhausted. What can I say? I suppose my repository of sunny cheerfulness has finally been depleted.

But then this morning, while I was davening, I was reminded of something. I remembered that I could choose to see the accident one of two ways:

• As an event that was warranted due to some aveirah that was done by either myself or someone else in the world, or
• As an event that demonstrated that I merited being saved

To put it differently, I could focus on the fact that I was rectifying some deficiency/negativity or on the fact that Hashem deemed that I should live.

When I started thinking about the accident from this new angle, the rain cloud that had been hovering over me the last few days lifted. Instead of thinking about this event that has affected my life in every way for the last year and a half as just "something that Hashem decided should happen to me", end of story, I began to really appreciate how Hashem had determined that I merited to live. When you're faced with that type of realization, you start seeing things clearly.

I am not someone, you see, who normally dwells on my merits. Rather, I focus on what I need to fix in order to improve. That's not to say that I feel I am without merit, but I find it generally more productive to focus on what will incite me to grow further as a person. Recognizing therefore that while Hashem has indeed brought me suffering for my own benefit/the benefit of the world, He has also saved me because there is specific benefit to my being in this world, is a major realization. And with that realization, I can now devote some mental energy into figuring out ways that I can best fulfill whatever the specific purpose for my having being saved is.