[04/40] Floorwax & Bookcases

Waxing the floor, building the bookcase.

Before my beautiful son Emmett was born (almost 15 months ago), I had two home-improvement projects to complete. One was re-waxing our kitchen's linoleum floor and the other was building a built-in bookcase.

(I am amazed that my precious little boy is 15 months old... and that it seems to have taken me this long to get to write about this...)

With regard to the two projects:

I was very excited about the bookcase.
I was not excited about the floor.

The bookcase project was at the very upper limit of my skill set and consequently would be really challenging.

The re-waxing of the floor would involve slowly removing the old finish, tile by tile, and then smoothly applying the new wax, very, very slowly.

Building the bookcase was fun! I had to think and then re-think what I had thought. Then I had to think creatively when I faced problems that I didn't foresee (like when the air-conditioning vent on the ceiling had to be moved).

The waxing, not so fun. I had figured it was going to take about six hours of slowly, methodically creeping on the floor with multiple buckets of solutions and a plethora of sponges. But, after about two hours of tedious work, I found I’d only managed to put down about 10% of the new wax. In order to keep to my budgeted time line, I decided that shortcuts would be prudent and necessary.

I spread a thin layer of the wax over about 40% of the floor and waited to see if it would dry in a relatively uniform manner. It did, and so I finished the rest in less than an hour, congratulating myself on my ingenuity.

Alas, when the floor had fully dried, my shortcut was painfully obvious—90% of the floor looked awful. Now had to completely start over and remove the newly, poorly applied wax.

What I learned—besides the importance of strictly following the instructions when re-waxing a floor—was that I enjoy challenging myself so much that I will create problems in order to turn a boring task into something more challenging.

As frightening a thought as that is to ponder, think about how it applies to your own life.

Are there situations where—even though it doesn't logically make sense to do so—you complicate matters so that you can rescue yourself, à la Baron Münchhausen?

I wish that we could see the utter simplicity of life, that all things pass, that problems resolve, and that there is actually less for us to do than we could ever imagine.

I love and will conclude with the words of a prayer in Leonard Bernstein's Mass, "Sing God a simple song... make it up as you go along... sing like you like to sing... God loves all simple things, for God is the simplest of all. For God is the simplest of all." listen

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[03/40] Rule of Three

A wise woman I know recently explained to me what she calls "The Rule of Three."

You can tell someone to do something once.

You can tell someone to do something a second time.

You can even tell someone to do something a third time.

But, that's it. After that you have to respect their freedom of choice to do what they want.

What a liberating truth!

I can be involved in other people's lives, but if I give them advice and they don't take it, I need to remember that it's their life, not mine!

For example: at the stained-glass workshop I attend on Tuesday nights, I recently saw someone cutting pieces without numbering them in a way that I would consider to be proper. I commented and they told me it would not be a problem. I argued that they wouldn't be able to track their progress and that using numbers would save them time in the long run. They explained that they could keep track of their progress just fine. Later, after they were frustrated by their lack of organization, I saddled up and explained how they could remedy the situation. They went to get chocolate.

What did I learn?

If people don’t want my help, I need to stop offering it.

What is so liberating about this "rule of three" is that it helps me remember that their stained-glass project is not my stained-glass project.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Tarfon (Avot 2:18) said,

You are not obligated to finish the work; nor are you free to not do it at all.

How true! We can help and be involved in other people's lives and do so lovingly, but if they don't want to follow our suggestions, we need to learn to let them do their own thing.

We often forget about this with our loved ones.

But what if we applied The Rule of Three?

I think we would all be a lot happier.

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[02/40] Cleverness

I want to share a quote with you that rocked my world when I first read it:

"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment."
- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

What a fantastic notion!

Oh, how I have to heed and learn this one!

It is better to be bewildered than clever.

I know that. Its just that cleverness delights and comforts me so...

Being clever is figuring out (or at least pretending to figure out) how things happen. Being bewildered is allowing yourself to delight in the mystery.

Think of one's enjoyment at a magic show — isn't it better to be amazed than brainy.

What if life were just a big magic show?

Don't we all spend a little too much time hypothesizing, making sense of things, and looking for explanations as to why this or that happened?

I know I do. I come up with myriads of reasons to explain away the mysteries of life I don't understand.

Wouldn't we all be better served wondering?

Euripides wrote, "Cleverness is not wisdom." I agree. Besides, being perennially clever is exhausting. It might be far wiser of us to live in the unknown.

Descartes wrote something that I think points us in the right direction, "In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate."

God, please help us all to be less clever, to contemplate more and to be comfortable being bewildered.

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[01/40] Be, Do, and Have

Think about the three notions of "Be," "Do," and "Have."

Think about the things that you are.

Think about the things that you do.

Think about the things that you have.

The last list — the things that we have — is almost invariably the largest and easiest to conceptualize.

The inventory of things that we do is still large, but less so than the things that we have.

And then there is the first list — who we are.

We can make a visual pyramid of the words to remind us of their levels of importance:

Be
D o
H a v e

We know that we aren't really defined by the things that we have, even though we all sometimes forget it.

And, while we have every right to feel a sense of accomplishment because of the things that we do or have done, we know that this too is not what defines us.

The being list — that is the important one. What you have and what you do pale compared to the simple and wonderful notion of your existence! You are here on this planet and that is enough! You are here and, as Dr. Wayne Dyer likes to say, "You belong." You are and that's that.

You are sufficient just in your being.

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.