I have known for some time now that life is a waiting room.
We wait for something wonderful to happen: love, elation, success, admiration, maybe even adulation.
However, I have learned lately that waiting can be very destructive without inner satisfaction for which we and we alone are responsible and capable of creating.
Without being able to think or look at ourselves every day with a measure of satisfaction for having done a good deed, changed someone’s life for the better, had a positive influence or helped to make someone’s life a little easier, I believe that waiting is often the waste of a life.
What a wonderful feeling it is to think of, plan and execute something that will help others, without expecting anything in return; no thanks, medals or public recognition, but the ultimate gratification of knowing that we have helped our fellow man and moved this world a little farther from the abyss.
Severyn Ashkenazy co-founded Beit Warszawa, a Progressive Synagogue in Poland.
www.beit-warszawa.org.pl/siteconte
