Usually, for lunch, I eat 2 yogurts with crackers. I don’t like the time I need to invest in preparing/eating, and not to mention the encumbered feeling of the digestion process, and I wouldn’t mind shedding some pounds. So I keep my lunch simple. But compliments to my wife, she made me today a cuisine of the highest caliber – cheese sandwich. I can’t deny it, I was excited that I will be eating well today. As I was walking out of my house, I was thinking I deserve this, I should be eating well every day. Why not?? Why should I settle for yogurt? Why should people be eating better than me? I was even (foolishly) thinking about having a conversation with my wife that yogurt is not going to cut it for me anymore and someone needs to up their game and it ain’t me.
In any event, I get to the place where I learn every day and I put my bag down on a chair to get my books. When I come back, to my chagrin, I see a man who I have never seen before hovering over my bag and gazing at its contents, and I quickly realize he has set his eyes on my cheese sandwich, surreptitiously coveting it. I didn’t think he would be so bold as to steal it but I couldn’t take a risk. I didn’t want to embarrass him so I nonchalantly approached him, pretending to be on my phone while standing next to my bag. This man still pays no heed to my signals and his gaze only intensifies at my cheese sandwich. At this point, I am thinking this man is brazen-faced! He is willing to rob my sandwich right in front of my nose! No shame! I don’t want to confront him directly so instead I rub my thigh against my bag, signaling to him that I am willing to defend my cheese sandwich at any cost! Beware, you thug! This is getting serious!
Finally, he takes heed of my not-so-subtle hints and timidly asks me if the bag is mine. As I was about to lay him a smackdown that the bag is certainly mine and that I am the legal owner of the cheese sandwiches, and he needs to take 3 steps back from my sandwich immediately . . . but then I realized his clothes were a bit tattered. He looked a bit disheveled and his hair unkempt and it hit me like a ton of bricks that this man is probably homeless and he’s been going hungry . . .
I can’t tell you how bad I felt. At that point I did what any decent person would do: I told him my wife accidentally packed those sandwiches but I’m on a diet so I don’t want it and he should take it and enjoy it. He was sooooo happy! And it made me soooo happy! I had nothing to eat the whole day but I have never been so satiated.
It made me think that he did more for me than I could ever do for him. The human being’s nature is that no matter how great or how rich, he is incomplete without other people, and will always need in some form to take. But inherent to the human condition is also the need to give. The need to bestow, the need to help, and in a deep way, the need to be needed. In that vein, at times taking is really giving; and giving is an act of gain and growth. Granting a person the opportunity to give is letting him experience the full depth of what it means to be human. We all need help and we should be grateful when someone lends us a hand. But we who are the ones that are fortunate to be in the position to give a hand should recognize that we are the true beneficiaries of giving. The uplift, the depth, the humanity we feel when we help is this transcendent feeling of bliss – and it’s as close as ever that we can get to feeling the presence of G-d.
2021