Her Toy & My Toy / Her Gashmius & My Gashmius

My daughter was upset on Monday because a tiny bit of paint got scratched off her toy Tracy airplane. As far as she was concerned Tracy was broken. The fact that her toy now had an imperfection bothered her so much that she completely fixated on the imperfection for some time.

Later that day while driving, a small stone hit my windshield an put a small crack in it. My wife looked over at me and requested that we not let this small thing rob us the enjoyment of my day off from work. The size of the crack would not necessitate replacing the whole windshield. In fact, if the crack remained small, nothing would need to be done.

The timing of this event made it easy to draw a parallel between the paint scratch in my daughter's toy and the crack in my windshield. If I wanted my daughter to continue to enjoy her toy despite its imperfection I needed to set an example and follow my own advice not to let a little thing bother me. That is what I did. I put the crack in the windshield out of my mind an muttered "zol zein a kapara" under my breath.

If we are concerned with our ruchnius we need to be able to live with imperfections in our gashmius.

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"Zol zein a kapara" is a Yiddish expression that means "it should be an atonement". It is an expression said when something unfortunate happens in order to be able to view the event in proper context.