Large, round object. Move it towards the goal; get it through the doorway. Outmaneuver those big, burly guys trying to stop you, trying to take it from you. Be quick. Use your feet.
Sounds familiar? Sounds like my life.
"From everything that one sees or hears about," taught Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, "one should derive a lesson in the service of the Creator."
Perhaps the most popular sport on earth today is the game of soccer, or "football" (as it is called outside of the United States). As is the case with every phenomenon in G-d's world, this game can serve as a model and metaphor for
our mission in life.
The objective of the game is to move a ball into a "goal" or "gate." This would be fairly easy to achieve were it not for the fact that facing the players
is an opposing team which will do everything in its power to prevent them from scoring a "goal." But then again, if there were no opposing team, the full extent of the players' skill and power would never be actualized. For such is
the nature of the human being: our most potent potentials are awakened only by challenge and adversity.
The ball can be maneuvered with various parts of the player's body, but the
game is played primarily with the feet. The game requires much skill, but no
less important is the player's speed--much depends on whether a player can
outrun his opponent and move more quickly than he.
What can all this teach us regarding our daily endeavors and inner lives?
The earth is a sphere--a fact noted nearly two thousand years ago by the
Jerusalem Talmud.1 The objective of life is to move this "ball"
into the shaar haMelech--the gate of the King.2 By fulfilling the mitzvot of the Torah, we move the world toward the
goal of its creation.
At our every step, we are challenged by a formidable opposing team--composed
of our own negative traits and habits and a host of external foes--who obstruct
our advance toward the goal and seek to move the ball in the opposite direction.
But it is the perpetual presence of this opposition that provokes our deepest
potentials and maximizes our achievements.
A key factor in achieving victory are speed. The most skillful player
will be quite ineffective if his movements are slow, plodding, and
unenthusiastic. Similarly, a person's life must be animated with alacrity and
joy in order that his deeds should translate into scored goals and a true impact
upon his world.
The other important lesson is never to underestimate the power of the feet.
To advance the ball towards its goal, we make use of the full array of our
faculties, from "head" to "foot"--our minds, our capacity for feeling, our
talents and our physical energy. But our most important faculty is the "feet,"
which represents our capacity for action and "mindless" obedience. Although it
constitutes the "lowest" and least sophisticated of our faculties, it is our
unequivocal commitment to the divine will and the physical action of the mitzvot
that has the greatest impact upon our world and is the most powerful force for
its advancement and ultimate realization.3
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