Pulling Weeds

Thank God, it’s rainy season here in Israel. I waited all summer long for the rains to come back and bring the temperature back down to semi-boiling. Now, I’m thrilled to say that I can actually wear a heavy sweater! Hallelujah! One of the things that amazes me the most during rainy season is the astronomical rate at which plants grow. Literally overnight, a plant that was just a seedling has matured into a 300-foot tall Sequoia. I’m slightly exaggerating.

The growth is truly astounding, though. It’s almost supernatural. I’m beginning to wonder if secret plant fairies fly around at night with their bags of steroid and growth hormone-laced pixie dust, sprinkling it on all of the plants they manage to reach while we’re asleep. If I ever catch one of those fairies I’ll put it in a jar and make it sprinkle some magic dust on my bank account, and hope the effects are the same. I’ll keep you posted.

Unfortunately, though, these fairies don’t have very precise aim. Some of their pixie dust lands on budding weeds, causing them to shoot up to stratospheric heights in a matter of a few short hours. The problem with these weeds is not just their towering height; it’s the fact that they’re so difficult to pull out.

Yesterday, as I was putting my clothes in the washing machine outside, (did your jaw just drop?) I noticed with dismay that a whole bunch of weeds had suddenly sprouted around the perimeter of my yard. Of course, I knew that I would have to be the one to pull them out, because Hubby Handyman is too much of a princess to do such a dirty job. Actually, I am the handyman around here. Isn’t handyman the PC way of saying “slave” these days? No, I was mistaken. Real handymen get paid.

So I put on my mint green dish-washing gloves and my purple house robe to keep me warm, and got to work. I hunched down like a migrant worker picking strawberries in the California sunshine. Pick, throw. Pick, throw. I was starting to make a nice little pile in the center of my yard. There were actually a few smaller weeds, and they looked so cute, I thought about keeping them. But I realized that if I didn’t, they would grow up in no time and be much harder to remove. So I picked the baby weeds. I thought I heard them crying when I yanked them out of the ground. Of course, it could have been the neighbor’s baby that was crying, but it was hard to tell. These were magical fairy dust weeds.

My groove got cut short abruptly as I hit a snag – a three-foot-tall snag. This weed was a monster, and I knew it was gonna be a fight to get it out. “You’re all mine, weedy,” I threatened, as I threw off my cozy house robe and rolled up my sleeves. I re-adjusted my dish gloves and did a little boxing bounce-step to get myself pumped up. All of a sudden, I heard “Eye of the Tiger” playing in the background. Awww, yeah. Iraqi Balboa’s back. “You’z goin’ to weed heaven,” I taunted.

As I reached for the throat, I mean stalk, the weed suddenly did a bob and weave and escaped my death grip. “What the…?” I thought to myself. I reached for it again, and it leaned back nearly 45 degrees, again escaping my grip! “Not so fast, chica!” Could it be? Was the weed really speaking to me? In Spanish?? After recovering from the shock, I started getting angry. And when I’m angry, watch out. “GET OVER HERE, WEED!” I yelled, as I lunged for it.

I landed on top of it, hoping that my weight alone would kill it. I managed to wrap my gloved hands around it and we got into a bar-style brawl for a while. We rolled around and around, and for a while I thought about giving up. It seemed like the more I pulled, the more stubborn the weed got, as if it kept instantaneously getting longer and creating new roots. Just when I was ready to give up, I called out to the Heavens, “Hashem! Help me get this pigheaded weed out of the ground!” Lo and behold, the weed finally slid out at that moment.

I lay on the ground for a while, exhausted and out of breath. As I was watching the puffy gray clouds roll by, I remembered that our Sages compare weeds to bad character traits. If you don’t uproot them when they’re just starting to grow, it will be almost impossible to uproot them once they’ve firmly implanted themselves in your soul soil.

Two things: first, this explains why we repeatedly fail in our attempts to rid ourselves of unseemly character traits, such as the list is just too long. So, if you’re constantly beating yourself up over why you just can’t (fill in the blank,) stop! The roots of the character trait have dug themselves deep into your system. It’s not such a quick procedure to remove them, and certainly not painless.

Second, if we want to spare our children from having to fight their flaws to the death, we should do our best to correct ourselves. Until we fix our flaws, there is no way we can expect them to fix theirs. It’s preferable to work on improving ourselves when our kids still have baby weeds and not fully grown GMO-sized monster weeds from Monsanto. Read Rav Arush’s “Garden of Education” if you really care about your kids. And who doesn’t?

Third, there is little to no chance that we will be successful at uprooting our negative character traits without asking Hashem for help! I’ll let you in on a little secret: the game is rigged! We puny humans are put up against a powerful angel, and the odds are intentionally against us!

Why?

So we can seek Hashem in these difficult moments! Only, only, only with His help do we stand a chance of being better people.

Wait… that was three things. I’m tired. Anyhow, there is only one way we can involve Hashem in our struggles – we must speak with Him every day! Rebbe Nachman explains that personal prayer is the key to every salvation we need! Don’t wait until your weeds start growing out of control. Read In Forest Fields and The Garden of Gratitude, and you will have your victory!