Waxing Philosophical

I arrived in Vilna early Friday morning . . . it was still before five in the morning yet the Sun was already making its way up the sky. The air was cool, but not cold . . . birds flitted from blossoming trees. Hope was in the air. Spring time. Pesach Sheini -a second chance . . . after the frigid winter the earth is allowed once again to bloom. As I waited for someone to answer the door of the Rabbi's house (despite the bright sky it was only five!) I watched a small bug crawl up the yellow stucco wall. In an act of whimsy, I blew lightly on it. The insect froze not moving for several long minutes. I blew on it again and it scurried away backwards.
To the insect I must have been some unseen threat, the flap of a bird's wings or the flip of a lizards tongue. It froze hoping that I would not notice it. I blew again and it ran away from the impending danger. To the bug I could have been a force that would end it's fleeting life . . . or I could have been the wind.
Next I noticed a few lone ants making their way along the cracked concrete ground . . . an endless expanse of hills and crannies to any insect. I put my foot down in front of the lone ants blocking it's path. The ant, like the bug on the wall stopped for a moment, but then it started moving around the obstacle, looking for some other path. I moved my foot again . . . again the pause . . . again the new trajectory.

In life we can come up against many problems. We can freeze, let them take over our entire existence hoping that some how they will go away. In the interim we merely waste away our allotted time. If the problem persists then we can back track, run away . . . but then we loose sight of our goal . . . we have still lost.
Or we can be like the ant. Pause for a moment to take in the scenario . . . and then just keep going at until we got it right.

These insects may very well live their entire lives in the few meters of some Rabbi's backyard near the old city of Vilna, Lithuania.
A microcosm within a microcosm . . . an ephemeral moment with in an infinite number of other ephemeral moments. A dot on a grain of sand in the Sahara desert. And yet they will live out a full existence, not even aware that the almighty bird/lizard/wind or the massive obstacle were nothing more then a bochur named Mottel standing in the backyard of some Rabbi near the old city of Vilna, Lithuania at five in the morning -himself only A microcosm with in a microcosm . . . an ephemeral moment with in an infinite number of other ephemeral moments. A dot on a grain of sand in the Sahara desert.