Climb up and slide down! Vayetzei

When I was younger, I used to play a game called chutes and ladders. On one occasion, I took my piece and casually avoided all the chutes so that I could “win” the game. The people playing the game with me explained that, although I “won”, the game was now pointless and therefore a waste of time.

This week's Parsha is jam-packed with adventure. It seems like with every step Yaakov took, he ended up right back in the same place. This got me thinking, it could have saved Yaakov a lot of time and heartache if he could have just skipped the challenging process or the times when he failed. Wouldn't he have been more successful?

The answer that I came up with is that just as with the game of chutes and ladders if I were to skip the game process and win it would not be beneficial. So too, we need to go through the challenges in life to be successful.

Sometimes life can get rough and it doesn't go my way. However, if I skip out on the experiences, the challenges and the knowledge, then I gain nothing.

I hope that we can live through those challenging experiences together by overcoming them. I hope that the impact of these challenges makes, will help shape us into better people that will make a positive impact on the world! As the Rebbe says, let us make this day better than yesterday by adding in our acts of goodness and kindness!

Good Shabbos

All the best!

Avroham Y Ross