Recently a picture quote caught my eye. The quote was as follows. “If you found a book which contained your life story, would you read it till the end?” This seems like a big philosophical and scientific conversation, but seeing what life has in store for you is not unheard of.
In this week's Parsha, Shelach, Hashem commanded Moshe and Aharon to pick 12 men (one from each tribe) to go on a mission and scout out the land to which we were planning on going. Although this turned out to be a disaster, the idea still is very popular. When someone is fighting an enemy army, they will send spies to check out the situation - i.e. the number of troops, types of weapons, security and forts etc. - for future attacks. Moshe sent men to see what Hashem had in store for the Jewish people in the future. Similarly, it is only natural for us to want to look in the book to see what Hashem has in store for us.
So, would we look in that book, and read it to the end? A possible answer to this question is based on the the amount of effort one will put to change whatever is in the book that they don't like it. A book is just a variation, one version, of the future, the culmination of hundreds of decisions we make over a lifetime. No future is definite; that is why the spies failed so badly. They thought, as we would also, “This is the future and there is no reason to try changing it.” But really, nothing is for sure. This week, as we have not been privy to a book of the upcoming events in our lives, please join me in making our futures the best they can possibly be - filled with Torah, mitzvos and positivity.
