On my recent trip
to Eretz Yisroel I was asked by a very nice lady,
who had sat on the other side of the empty seat that separated us during our flight,
if I could help with her luggage and I readily agreed figuring that I would be
stuck there for an hour or more, as was always the case, waiting for my own
luggage to arrive.
As it turns out,
I was surprised (shocked would be more accurate) to find that my suitcase was
one of the first to come off the conveyor and onto the baggage carousel.
I was in a hurry
to get to Yerushalayim and it occurred to me that maybe her luggage wouldn’t put
in an appearance any time soon. I didn’t
wish to be bogged by this lady’s luggage so I quickly scanned the crowd for a
replacement and readily noted that there was any number of people who would gladly
help her without even being asked to do so.
So with clear conscience I quickly gathered my things.
I then asked her
to watch my stuff while I went to freshen up a bit. As I walked to the facilities I went through a
whole back and forth in my head as to whether or not I should help her in any
case even though there were many others who could perform this chesed just as
easily.
By the time I
had washed my hands I had thoroughly weighed the pros and cons of hanging
around to help this lady and I had come to the conclusion that it would be the
right thing to do despite the aforesaid plethora of qualified replacements.
Mazel tov!
I had decided to
do a chesed.
As I was basking
in the light of my momentary righteousness I suddenly remembered that I had been
forced to check a hat box at JFK that now had to be picked up at the oversized
luggage counter here in Ben Gurion. Had
I left the airport as I had originally planned I would have left without it. It wasn’t until I had decided to remain to
assist the lady with her things that Hashem reminded me about my hat.
Within seconds I
had connected the dots but then I remembered something I had recently heard
at the levaya of Rav Mechel Tropper z"l. Here I was sifting through the Yeas and Neys
of performing a chesed with the default position being not to do it unless I
could justify it which, Boruch Hashem, I did.
This is what most of us do on a daily basis but the whole thought
process is fundamentally flawed.
Rav Mechel’s
attitude toward chesed was just the opposite. His default position was to always do whatever
chesed appeared on his screen with only a serious objection to doing it given any weight,
because when an opportunity to do a chesed came his way he would ask himself:
Why should I not do the chesed?
