Melting The Snow Of Our Lives

The U.S. has been blessed with quite a bit of snow this winter and I personally have had a fun time shoveling it… at least it was an unplanned exercise!

It wasn’t until this morning’s shoveling detail that I began to realize that snow is pretty fascinating.  It is beautiful and majestic…and to think that in the end it is simply frozen water! When it comes down it looks like soft powder nothing that can stick and accumulate but after the fact it feels very heavy and real when you touch it and shovel it. It takes quite a bit of energy to clean up. Then there are the icicles that can be quite sharp and you have to be careful with it.  And yet, it’s all just water.

As I stared at the hills of snow all around me I realized that just like the snow our lives are sometimes heavier than at other times.  We come into this world and as we go through it, dealing with all sorts of life events, challenges, situations and issues, it all feels very real and important. Yet, in the end, as the Jewish Sages and Mystics explained, these things are not actually real. There is a famous kabbalistic statement “Alma De Shikra” that describes our world and literally means “A world of lies” or “A world of illusions”.

One of these days, while shoveling, I asked myself: What if I had some device that emits heat (almost like a flashlight, except that instead of light it projects a powerful wave a heat ) and I could just turn it on and go around and melt the snow by just pointing this device at it? Or what if I had this special heating system installed in the ground on my property that every time we have snow, I could just turn on and it would melt the snow.

And then I asked myself what would be the equivalent of this type of device or a system in our lives? At this point what came to my mind was the ideas of light and darkness. Light in both the physical and the spiritual sense eradicates darkness, it “melts” it instantaneously.

When we talk about the Neshama, the soul, we say that it has three “garments”, “clothings” which are Thought, Speech and Action. And this is the lesson I learn from all of this: in order to “melt” the “snow” of our lives and turn it into the nourishing water (which is its essence), we need to make sure that we turn on the heat on all these three levels, by thinking positive, good-feeling thoughts; by speaking loving, kind words and by doing good, meaningful deeds. If we do that, instead of shoveling the snow, like everybody else, it will magically and instantly melt by itself. It might take a little bit of extra effort and preparation upfront, by the reward will be well worth it.