We all sometimes love to marvel about things like, ‘Had I never gone to the Pizza Hut that day, I would never have met her . . .’ or, ‘It all began when I spotted him in the police line-up.’ It is fine, so long as you understand it as deep mystery, the romantic beginning of the story of how your fates have been intertwined . . . but not as a simple accident.
To say that anything happened by sheer luck can ultimately be a threat to your relationship. When we believe that we gained something merely by chance – that it was not preordained – we are adopting a dangerously cavalier attitude towards it. Just look at the way lottery winners spend money, compared with those who have to earn it through hard work.
So if we believe that we bumped into the person we are dating only by accident, we may be far less committed to making the relationship work when things begin to go wrong. What begins by chance could end by chance. We think, ‘Heck, it’s a shame that after all these dates this thing ain’t working out. But had I not rescheduled my appointment at the proctologist (?!) that day, we never would have met anyway.’
Judaism maintains that nothing happens by accident. According to Jewish thought, the Almighty has a soul- mate intended for each and every one of us. And when a couple who were meant to be together separate, we are told that God weeps for this disruption of His plans. Keep that it mind next time you snigger at the ‘Lonely Hearts’ section of the newspaper.
A belief that God brought us together inspires us to try much harder. This is the reason that the Tenth Commandment closes the circle originally opened by the First Commandment, ‘I am the Lord your God.’ Someone who believes in God will be satisfied with what he has as a blessing from God, and will never covet anything belonging to another man. He will accept that he should exert every effort to make God‘s blessings work for him, rather than always looking over the fence into his neighbour’s back garden to see what he is missing.
Moishe the tailor came to the Rabbi to complain. `Rabbi, I had a wonderful business until that wretched cheat Shalom the tailor opened next door to me. He has taken all my business. And do you know what? I put in six stitches per inch, where Shalom only puts in four. I use 100 per cent wool, while he uses a polyester wool blend. And I put double stitching in all the seams. Shalom puts only single stitching.’
The Rabbi looked at Moishe and said, My dear Moishele, it seems to me that if you concentrated half as much on your own business as you do on Shalom‘s, you would probably have as many customers as him.’
Your life is your life. There is no need to focus on what you don’t have. Work with what you do have.
