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Home
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A Little Bit at a Time
by Rosally Saltsman
Some advice from an unlikely place, a woman who is always thin and
beautiful, helped me lose weight. When I remarked how I couldn't imagine
that she needed to watch her weight, she said that she did and that she
kept her weight off one gram at a time. That's when I stopped thinking of
losing weight in terms of kilos and more in terms of fighting off one gram
at a time. I eventually lost the weight I wanted to and now, when I get on
the scale after Shabbos, I recall her words and begin another week of
taking off one gram at a time.
Moreover, I feel her advice can be extended to include life's deeper
issues. We all face the struggles of character improvement. And we all feel
the frustration and grief when we lose our tempers after working so hard on
ourselves not to, or when we say the wrong thing to the wrong person or
slip up on our hour of shemiras haloshon. But if we were to consider
our efforts one minute at a time, we would have all those minutes of
success heaped on the balance against that one minute of failure. We could
take heart and it would encourage us to become more successful.
I read recently that something like 70% of Israelis are in overdraft at the
bank. The burdens of livelihood are well known in every community in Israel
but especially within the religious community where the values of devoting
oneself to raising large families, studying Torah and living modestly come
up against the realities of marrying off many children and meeting the
daily needs of those large families. It's frightening; it's overwhelming
and though "Hashem will help", we can't always escape the feeling of
pressure when we wonder when and how. However, instead of thinking in terms
of thousands or hundreds of shekels or dollars, perhaps the secret is one
agora at a time. Realisticly speaking, perhaps one shekel. Saving or
earning one shekel at a time is not an overwhelming goal and it all adds
up. I know of a woman who is paying off her share of her daughter's
apartment literally one shekel at a time and she's doing it in a matter of
months.
There are people who, at different times in their lives, face problems of a
magnitude more than the one-to-five on a scale of ten; a prolonged illness,
a bad marriage, a problem child (may we all be spared) drain the people
going through them and require endless stores of spiritual and physical
energy. When faced with a problem that seems insurmountable, we often ask
ourselves, "How will we ever get through this?" The answer: One day at a
time.
When a teacher tries to explain a concept or a procedure to a student, the
rule of thumb is to break up the problem into its smallest components. All
women understand this rule just before Pesach. They tackle the war they
wage against real and imagined chometz, shelf by shelf, closet by
closet, room by room.
The Torah teaches us the commandments, not all at once, but parsha by
parsha, chapter by chapter, even letter by letter. Through their
faith and fortitude, the Jewish people have survived with Hashem's help
throughout the decades, centuries and millennia, despite tremendous odds.
There's no reason why we can't continue to survive as a nation and as
individuals, day by day, minute by minute, mitzva by mitzva,
shekel by shekel and gram by gram. Even gold, the most precious metal, is
measured in ounces and grams.
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