What you see
is what you get is
for all too many of us the way we view those who cross our path in life. Once we feel that we have sized up a person thoroughly
enough to hit his bottom line we then tend to extrapolate out from there to
what will be with him down the road. And
this is especially true as concerns parents, teachers, and those dealing with
people with issues, such as mental health professionals, social workers
and the like.
If someone is
established as an ois varf today that’s the lens through which we will look
at him tomorrow.
And if he does
Teshuva and gets his act together?
It’s possible that
we could be looking right at him and all we’ll see is the ois varf
because we’re invested in the negative image we have created for his future.
Or we could even see
nothing.
Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein
tells us of the principal who threw a 10th grade Bais Yaakov girl
out of school. Years later he ran into
her wearing a shaitel in one of the local stores and didn’t recognize her. When she introduced herself he said: “I can’t
believe it’s you.”
Of course he
couldn’t. He expected her to end up as a
waitress in a Mexican restaurant if that much. That he would find her wearing a shaitel at a
kosher meat market wasn’t on his screen.
Here’s a
girl. Her top can be charitably described
as having a low neckline and ditto in reverse for the hemline when there happens
to be one.
She sports the
number of piercings that is de rigueur in her social circle and keeps them on
public display until 1:00 A.M. on weekdays and 4:00 A.M. plus on Shabbos Night
and Motzoi Shabbos.
In addition to
smoking she also drinks more than her brothers and is not one to say no when
pot and cocaine are proffered at the numerous parties she attends.
She also hangs
out with a large group of boys, mascot like, and she is very egalitarian.
So when one
looks at such a girl what does one see? A
life on the street perhaps? An abusive marriage
somewhere down the road that will be a poster child for a dysfunctional family?
That’s pretty much what that principal
saw.
But it doesn’t
have to be this way.
Rabbi Wallerstein
says that if you’re Ronnie Greenwald you don’t see a kid at risk or one already
lost. Instead of using the
present as a template for the future, he flips it around and uses a goal
oriented future as a template for the present.
He sees a young
woman lighting the Shabbos candles with her children standing around her.
This is the
image before his eyes and he then does everything in his power and then some to
get her to that point.
