Being Goal-Oriented And Present In The Moment

MyLife Essay Contest

A Jew jumps joyfully into the sea… and everybody follows…

This essay will hopefully shed some light on the mentality of the man who started the splitting of the sea.

I would like to discuss how this story is present in ISIS’s ideology, exactly what it means to me in my life, to touch on the psychology behind this `leap of faith`. To (without sounding too pompous) apply it to The Master Plan… (Service of G-d)

The purpose of this essay is to enlighten, entertain, and give a peek at a Chassidic approach to life.

O.K. here goes: Nachshon Ben Aminadav, the aforementioned ‘jumper’, was goal oriented. That’s it!

With his eye on the goal – the receiving of the Torah – at Mount Sinai, there was only one option, and that was forward. Sorry I am getting ahead of myself here… lets go back and take a peek to ‘set the scene’.

Episode One

Shadows slowly started lengthening on the sun beaten beach setting the damp sand aglitter – somewhat malevolently…

Three million Jews are standing shifting uneasily, closer to the water’s edge. Heads are turning, compulsively, to survey the horizon a’ haze… The sand cloud raised by the Egyptian hooves and spiked chariot wheels, springs up in a million little plumes, a vast vermiculation of seething death. It appears the Jews have escaped Egypt only to fall to the Egyptian war machine, less than three days later.
Have all the plagues and miracles been for naught?!

XXX

Millions of angels are gathered before huge panoramic OLED screens… lights dim… heavenly pixels flicker to life… a huge LG logo appears giving surrounding cloudbanks an eerie tint.
“Ahhh… they’ve finally replaced the Samsung screens!” purrs one group of malachim (Hebrew for angels) in sync. A second group of malachim respond singularly, “Holy, Holy, Holy, The entire world is filled with His glory”.
The buzzing of supernal feathers quiets down as a cherubs-eye view of the Jews materializes on screen.
Bated breath… Something big is happening…

Episode Two

There was machlokes, before we’d even become a proper nation, the bickering started…

They are four camps, points of view. They each have their followers advocating loudly to their rabbi – Moshe Rabeinu – who is now presently standing on a smallish boulder facing the rowdy crowd. “Where is Aaron when you need him?” Moses raises his eyes tiredly to the heavens looking for answers.

A gentle breeze ripples across the shore, tugging at Moses’s robes, tickling the sand… …and still the Egyptians come. The four camps are divided thus:
There are those who just want to go back, surrender, return to being slaves, after all have they not just left Egypt fabulously wealthy. “Nu, so the deals gone sour”, they will just do it bigger and better next time, as in, “hey we can make a business of this”.
Others take a further right approach, all for doing battle with the nearing army.
The third crowd wants to go tail to the wind, to run away into the desert, to desert, so to say…
And the fourth to fling themselves into the sea.

XXX

All eyes glued to the screens, the malochim shift and shuffle, a sibilant silence, a supernal symphony of suspense.

Episode Three
Nachshon Ben Aminadav

There is a splash, and all eyes turn to the water to see one crazy man charging into the waves. A thin but powerful voice cuts through the air, emanating from the almost entirely submerged man. There is silence as he cries, “GLUG GLUG GLUUuuuuughggg”. O.K. he actually shouted, “SAVE ME, O’G-D FOR THE WATERS ARE THREATENING MY LIFE!!!”

The waters split.

Episode-less

Zooming in on this man for whom the sea split, understanding what drove him, must be prefaced with mention of his status. Nachshon was elected prince of Judah¹ he was a sane man and leader, not someone who suffered a breakdown and ran into the sea².
He was certainly a thought out man acting on reason, so what was his rationale for his startling approach?

Rabbi M. M. Shneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains as follows: Nachshon understood that G-d had taken the Jews out of Egypt (with all the miracles) for a reason, and that was to give us the Torah. In order to receive it, we had to reach Mount Sinai. He understood that none of the options – such as fighting the Egyptians – was going to bring us any closer to our goal, the only way was forwards – sea notwithstanding – so forwards he went. There was a certain simplicity there, a single-mindedness, but it was precisely this goal orientation that affected the waters parting.

Regardless of how you or I would have acted under the same circumstances, we can appreciate that here was one focused Jew, one who understood G-d wanted ‘on’ and went. I believe an important clarification is in order here, both in the definition of and in our story used to illustrate ‘goal orientation’. I have recently stumbled across various psychology based essays, contrasting ‘living in the moment’ to ‘goal orientation’… they really are not opposites! Quite to the contrary; they are one. (There is no jewality at all 🙂

Goal orientation is getting to one’s destination in the most efficient manner. To every goal there is a path comprised of milestones and activities, each one should be as close and as accurate a stepping-stone to the goal as possible. Furthermore, each and every one of these stepping stones must be focused on a hundred percent, in its time, to be completed in the most efficient manner. This then allows the overall goal, also, to be completed in the most efficient way.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe advised this, in his usual down to earth manner, as a method for successful usage of time, that rather than multi-tasking, one should direct ones attention entirely to the matter at hand.

Now, in reference to our story, Nachshon was not fixating on the goal (Mt. Sinai and the receiving of the Torah), to the exclusion of all sense. Rather, he believed that as G-d wants the Jews to get the Torah, he is going to make it happen, sea or no sea… He fully expected G-d to split the sea, as that was a step forward in G-d’s Master Plan.³

Yes You Can!!!
The World, You, and I

This future focused ideology is a very powerful tool, as a driving force pushing us toward personal accomplishment and success, in all faucets of our lives. There are great examples of this in both a macro and micro scale.
We, have all seen this approach pays off, investing a premium of effort short term, for a greater goal, (here I am talking from personal experience) most explicitly in areas such as diets and fitness programs, but really in any project or goal we set ourselves.

I believe that we could all pick such an approach, truthfully for anything in life, spiritual or mundane. This can be within a home, work, or even community setting. To review vague plans, and (at least mentally) reestablish them as goals, requisite with all their sub-goal steps.

Jumping to the other side of the spectrum, in scale and morality, huge organizations even terrorist groups such as ISIS thrive on their ideals, on their longer term goals. It can’t be fun getting bombed by tens of countries, but still they fight… … you can learn something from everyone, I suppose.

May we all have only success in our long and short term ‘stepping-stone’ goals, in our service of G-d, and in everything positive in our lives… …starting today!

Footnotes and Sources