There are crossroads where you choose not only your future, but your past as well.
Take one road and your past becomes but an irrelevant and forgotten dream.
Take another road and even the darkest past can become a magnificent frame for a moment of glory. The moment for which your soul was formed and all the past was made.
CROSSROADS AND GALOSHES
Today's "Crossroads" commentary is cogent indeed. Every new moment is a rebalancing of past, present, and future. All our good deeds may unravel in an instant. All our not so good deeds may be transformed by good in an instant. It is well to remember this, as we may too easily disparage ourselves or others by complacency, hopelessness, arrogance, or a lack of compassion and forgiveness for ourselves and others.
A word on GALUS AND GALOSHES. One commentator mentioned his "golos". I am reminded that I have often wondered, if the origin of the name "galoshes" for "rain boots" was given by a YID, as the etymological cognate is so obvious. So, as the weather prediction is for serious rain in the next day or two, I ask, "YESH LICHAH GALOSHES? ATOH MUCHAN?" [Do you have rain boots? Are you ready for the rain?]
We should all remember that rain is good and vital to all life. GESHEM TOV!
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Future holds us We cannot choose our future our future chooses us, Our past is our repetition of our History, We can only live in the present moment Reply
I choose the latter road... Sure, there have been negative times in my life (for example, the past several years, up until this very day) that I would rather have not gone through. But even in my present Golus, I look forward to the day, G-d willing, very soon, that I can look back on this period of my life as an event that happened in the past, and gain even more strength from it than I already have gained. May it happen very, very soon. Reply
but one could say that the Lord has chosen our path before we're born. We have control over certain aspects of our path, but the Eternal has the ultimate control over everything. Reply
Elul Elul makes me think about my existence and what I try to accomplish in the future. I guess, instead of being sorrowful of my past I must be thankful that I learn from where I have been for a better future.