Eternally Employed

My uncle retired last week.

He worked for the same company for over 40 years. It shouldn’t be a shock, but this has come as a surprise. It will be difficult to get used to him being “just an uncle” and not the senior Vice President in charge of the Global Investment Division. This man oversaw trillions of dollars change hands throughout his career. He was a powerful man and always made a striking appearance.

In other news, my wife is so excited about our newest addition, G-d Willing. Just a month ago she was exhausted and now she is flying. What caused the change? I started taking out the children in the afternoons, giving her an hour to herself. Rav Shalom Arush is so right in The Garden of Peace – whatever we give our wives we receive back tenfold. I am amazed how a little bit of effort on my part made such an impact on hers.

What’s the connection?

A short time ago one phone call from my uncle in New York would have thirty traders in Tokyo scurrying to their Bloomberg machines. On a whim he could move the Dow Jones Average a hundred points.

Now it’s all over. It’s so humbling to realize that no matter how powerful one becomes, everyone retires. Eternal and Infinite power does exist. It just doesn’t exist for man.

Policemen retire. Firefighters retire. Even leaders retire. David bun Gurion, the founder of modern Israel retired. So did Menachem Begin. In what might have been his worst career decision, Bill Clinton accepted the position of leader of the free world. As a result, he retired at the ripe old age of 54.

There comes a time where all of us fade into the sunset and are left to answer the most pressing question of the day: half and half or Irish Crème?

It doesn’t have to be that way. There are those jobs we never retire from. There are those positions in life where our decisions can always make a lasting impact on the most important people.

Being a parent is forever. Being a spouse is forever. We never stop being part of a family. To our final day on this earth we are, G-d Willing, spouses, brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents – even great grandparents.

Every act we perform for our loved ones are acts of kindness.

All of the status we garner for ourselves during our careers are transitory. It doesn’t mean anything in the grave. The money we earn doesn’t come with us. The whole concept behind estate and inheritance law is the Divine Truth that the money stays in this world once we leave it. Currency has no value in Heaven. Our job only existed to sustain ourselves and our families physically. Once we reach a certain point, it’s the 401k pension or the government that steps in as Hashem’s emissary of livelihood. Every job in life is truly a temp job. It’s just the duration that varies.

When we do something for our spouse like the dishes, taking the kids out, or just biting our lip when she had the roughest day possible and she just needs to blow off some steam by screaming at us for, uh, not buying the right type of hummus – an angel is created in the very place we are destined to go.

He opens his eyes, stands before G-d and says to Him: “This one down there is one of us! When the time comes he belongs here.”

The more acts we perform, the more angels appear to make the same claim before the True Judge.

We were brought up to believe that it is our money, our influence, and the reputation we make which defines who we are. We put our primary energies into these things as if we will be at the office forever. The Truth is the opposite. Most of what we strive for in this world only lasts the blink of an eye.

What’s forever are the roles we play as family. We never get fired. We aren’t allowed to quit. We have the opportunities to reap the rewards of the most intense love and happiness here on earth and in the Next World from what we do not as presidents, but as parents.

The world economy is changing. These days it is getting harder and harder to find a job that we can lose ourselves in or feel all-powerful. This is a blessing. It is an opportunity to turn our lives around and re-evaluate what’s truly important to us.

We can lament the fact that there are fewer opportunities to be successful for a short time, or we can embrace the knowledge that Hashem is opening our eyes to appreciate the roles that will make us happy forever.

* * *
Dovber Halevi lives with his wife and two children in Eretz Yisrael.