Big dreams

Photo by Jack Duval

God decided to start over. And he decided to put his trust in Noah.

Imagine it for a moment. Noah, who, according to the bible, was 600 years old at the time, is living his life haply as a righteous man doing righteous things. And then God comes to him and tells him to build an ark. Which would be surprising enough. But God did not just as for an ark. A asked him to bulid a very (very) big ark.

The length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits

For those of you who don’t know (I had to check it to be reminded), a cubit is approximately half a meter. So, the Ark was supposed to be 150 meters long, 25 meters wide and 10 meters high. A very big ark.

How was Noah supposed to feel about this task? Well, he was after all a righteous man, so he must have been happy doing the Lord’s work. However, there is one thing the bible does not tell us, and as every good story teller knows, you need to leave some things for the readers’ imagination.

As we remember, the reason for the building of the ark was that almost all the people of the world were evil. Now, 600 years old Noah starts building this huge ark, believing the world is going to end. How do you think the people around him acted? Did they come up to him and asked how they can help? Did they show appreciation for his dedication? Of course not! They probably mocked him. I can almost hear them laughing at him. We have all been there…

But Noah did it anyway. Not only because God told him to, but because some time in life, you just need to dream big, and ignore everybody. The world is not changed by cynics. It is also not changed by people who do only what other people think it reasonable and rationale. The easiest thing in the world is to say something is not possible.

The world is changed for the better by people who can dream big and defy conventional wisdoms. Who can do the impossible and who try to do the impossible not because everybody tells them they should and could, but in spite the fact that people tell them they should or could not.

A dream differs less from an act than most people think. All men’s acts were once dreams; all their acts will one day be a dream (Theodore Herzl, “Altneuland”, 1902).

Elad

 

Big dreams

God decided to start over. And he decided to put his trust in Noah.

Imagine it for a moment. Noah, who, according to the bible, was 600 years old at the time, is living his life haply as a righteous man doing righteous things. And then God comes to him and tells him to build an ark. Which would be surprising enough. But God did not just as for an ark. A asked him to bulid a very (very) big ark.

The length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits

For those of you who don’t know (I had to check it to be reminded), a cubit is approximately half a meter. So, the Ark was supposed to be 150 meters long, 25 meters wide and 10 meters high. A very big ark.

How was Noah supposed to feel about this task? Well, he was after all a righteous man, so he must have been happy doing the Lord’s work. However, there is one thing the bible does not tell us, and as every good story teller knows, you need to leave some things for the readers’ imagination.

As we remember, the reason for the building of the ark was that almost all the people of the world were evil. Now, 600 years old Noah starts building this huge ark, believing the world is going to end. How do you think the people around him acted? Did they come up to him and asked how they can help? Did they show appreciation for his dedication? Of course not! They probably mocked him. I can almost hear them laughing at him. We have all been there…

But Noah did it anyway. Not only because God told him to, but because some time in life, you just need to dream big, and ignore everybody. The world is not changed by cynics. It is also not changed by people who do only what other people think it reasonable and rationale. The easiest thing in the world is to say something is not possible.

The world is changed for the better by people who can dream big and defy conventional wisdoms. Who can do the impossible and who try to do the impossible not because everybody tells them they should and could, but in spite the fact that people tell them they should or could not.

A dream differs less from an act than most people think. All men’s acts were once dreams; all their acts will one day be a dream (Theodore Herzl, “Altneuland”, 1902).

Elad

Genesis 6, Dream, Noah, Big, Ignore everybody, Theodore Herzl, imagination, left out, story telling

There is always hope

Photo by Helico

Well, I read Genesis 5. All this begetting did not make much sense to me. While it is interesting to ask why this part is included in the bible at all, I am more interested in stories, so, I jumped to Genesis 6.

Genesis 6 is the beginning of the story of Noah’s Ark. But the story starts with a dark twist:

And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both man, and beast, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Jehovah. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, and perfect in his generations: Noah walked with God.

Don’t we all feel sometimes like men can only imagine evil continually? Every morning we open the newspaper and see all the horrible things that are happening around us. It is so easy to think that this is a true representation of the world. We are bombarded with bad news, with the extremes. It would not be a very interesting news reports if the news started with: “today, 5 billion people did nothing evil; most of them actually helped their friends”. Nevertheless, The fact that we only see and hear about bad things does not mean that only bad things are happening.

And what does that have to do with Noah’s story? Well, even God, who is not swayed by the new-age media and news reports, first assumed that everybody is evil. However, when he looked deeper, he found good. True, it was only one man I a world of evil, but it means that there is always hope. And that  the search for good is always worthwhile. If we look deep enough and continue to believe, we will find good in the world. We will find the people who are willing to help and sacrifice and change the world for the better.

It is easy to find (and to practice) evil. It is much harder to find (and practice good).

Elad

Fail better

Photo by fireflythegreat

Gensis 4 deals with jealousy and futile deaths. It is the story of Cain and Abel. But it also the story of the importance of failure.

I was reading the story and I was mesmerized by one sentence. Verse 7. Cain brings his offerings of sheep to God, but God prefers the vegetarian offerings of Abel. Cain is not happy with that. And then God talks to him and asks him a question. What he says to him is a mystery and the translations vary between versions of the English bible. You can check here how many different translations this sentence has. I was also not sure what exactly God was trying to say after I read the Hebrew version. And after reading a few of the interpretations, I finally realized what I think this is about.

I chose one translation of verse 7 that was in simple enough English to explain what I think it is trying to say:

If you do well, shall you not be accepted? and if you do not well, sin lies at the door. And to you shall be his desire, and you shall rule over him.

I think this story is about not giving up. Yes, we sometimes fail. We fail to satisfy others and more importantly we fail to satisfy ourselves. And then we stand on the verge of a crossroad. One road leads us to give up, succumb to the “sin” and lose our confidence, ability, self-efficacy and above all our happiness. This is the lane Cain finally choose, killing his brother and being dealt a horrible punishment.

Or we can choose the other road, master our emotions, learn from our failure and actually become better because of it. We can create a better offering that will be accepted. I believe Samuel Beckett explained it very accurately, in his novel, Worstward Ho:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better“.

And this is a lesson so acute to our modern world. As Peter Bergman writes in Harvard Business Review Blog:

Every time I ask a room of executives to list the top five moments their career took a leap forward — not just a step, but a leap — failure is always on the list. For some it was the loss of a job. For others it was a project gone bad. And for others still it was the failure of a larger system, like an economic downturn, that required them to step up. Yet most of us spend a tremendous effort trying to avoid even the possibility of failure.

Failure is a part of life we should embrace. We should not let failure set as back. It is time to rule over our failures!

Elad

Is hard work really a punishment?

Photo by Photomish Dan

Have you ever worked really hard for something, planning, thinking about it, putting all of you effort into it, and finally – finished the work successfully? How did that feel? Was that a good feeling? Have you ever created something, almost out of nothing – wrote, painted, drew, programmed? Did the creation of the final product felt good?

I think most of us felt, at least at some point in their life, the joy of hard work. The happiness that come with a work well done. For each and every one of us the joy comes from something a little different. For some it is the recognition by others. For others, it is the inherent feeling of pride. But we all know that although working hard could be a difficult experience, it could actually be a very gratifying experience as well.

And then you read this:

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Genesis 3, 17-19) .

Is this a really a punishment for defying the word of God? Really? The right to work hard in order to gain something?

I don’t think so. If God is all knowing and knows past and future, he would have known Adam would eat from the forbidden fruit. He could have prevented it. But, as I already mentioned in the blog, this story is about choice. However, there is a different lesson in the punishment. Are you ready for it?

Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort.

What Adam and Eve gained from eating the forbidden fruit must come with a price. Otherwise, it is not worth the effort. And from that moment on, everything worth having – and in biblical days the most important things were food and children – will not come without an effort.

Today, many of us view work as a burden, something you do to pay the bills. Something we need to get through. Maybe we should listen to the lesson of Genesis 3. Maybe by trying to make something worthwhile out of a job, we can reach flow and happiness. We spend so much of our days working; shouldn’t we try and gain something worthwhile out of all the effort?

Elad

Choice, temptations and responsibility

Photo by Leoncillo Sabino

Genesis 3 goes more thoroughly into the story of the forbidden fruit. I already wrote that I believe this story is about the fact that we always have a choice and about the importance of deferred gratification (and read the comments on my earlier post for an interesting discussion of this concept).

So, I continued thinking about this story as I was reading Genesis 3 and I think it is about responsibility. Life if full of temptations. Life is also full of mistakes. If you make choices, you would make some wrong ones along the way. Sometimes, it will just be because you made wrong choice. other times it will because of “Serpent”, because There will always be a “Serpent” along the way that will fool you into making the wrong choices. There are no complete saints. Everybody succumbs to some kind of temptation or makes some kind of error along the way. The real test is how you behave after you make that mistake.

Do you, Like Adam and Eve, try to hide from taking responsibility for your actions? Or, do you face God and all his might and face the consequences of your mistakes? Many times you see people getting into more trouble just because they don’t admit to their original mistake. They try to hide it, or tell more lies and end up in a worst situation than they started with. I don’t know if Adam and Eve’s punishment would have been less severe if they did not hide, but it hiding sure did not help.

Taking responsibility for your choices is not easy. I guess standing in front of the wrath of God wasn’t easy as well. But, your choices will come back to haunt you. It is better to take responsibility and own them sooner rather than later. It is the price we pay for having a choice to begin with, but I think it is a small price to pay.

Elad

Genesis 2 – It is not good to be alone

Photo by diluvi

In the last part of Genesis 2 we read about the story of the creation of woman. This is very strange because if you read Genesis 1 very carefully, you read verse 27, which says:

And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them

As you probably know, I think this is the most important verse of Genesis 1. If you think about it is strange that on one chapter we are told that male and female humans were created together and the chapter after we get a different story. I guess you could find all kind of explanations for this inconsistency but for me this means that the point of the story of Genesis 2 is not about the superiority of men over women (because the first woman was created out of man’s ribs).

I believe the important lesson in this story is the importance of not being alone. Of being with other people. It is not only about marriage, but about the completion we find for ourselves in the interaction with others. The term: “and they shall be one flesh” should not only be understood as man and wife, but as a more general interactions between human beings.

You have an idea – tell it to someone else. You are happy – spread it around. You are sad – don’t be alone, it will make you happier. Generally speaking human being are social animals, but we tend to forget the strength our family, friends and the people around us give us. Each and every one of us can find somebody who completes him, professionally, personally or spiritually.

The Bible tries to remind us that with all the wonders of the world and of nature, we will find the greatest fulfilment in interacting with other people.

Don’t be alone. Interact with others. Find a friend. Find a partner. Enjoy your family. Find the one who completes you.

Elad

Genesis 2 – Choice and Deferred Gratification

The Bible explains many times that God can see the future. And when you think about it from a religious point of view it makes sense. But, if believe that, then many things god does do not make sense. For example, the story in Genesis 2:

And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:  but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Why would God say that? He can see the future, right? He knows he will not kill Adam for eating from the tree and he knows he will eat from the tree. So what is the point?

Well, there is a point. First, it is about choice. Many of us choose every day to do things that we know are wrong, bad or forbidden. It could be small things like downloading and illegal file or lying on some kind of form. It could even be not paying your taxes like you should. We all do things like that every day. But we have a choice. We always do. Even if God presumably knows what will happen, he does not take the option of choice from us.

Second, it is about Deferred Gratification.  On the video above (and more here) you could see the famous Marshmallow Experiment. A famous test of this concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and discussed by Daniel Goleman in his popular work. In the 1960s, a group of four-year olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

The ability to defer gratification is an important one and I think it is what the Bible is trying to tell us. So, if that is so, wouldn’t the bible tell us a story of someone who actually defers gratification? No. Because what kind of story would that make? A very boring one. We need to know what a failure of deference would do in order to understand the moral. This is not done in this chapter, but this explains the beginning of this story here.

Elad

Genesis 2 – The importance of stopping

Photo by fazen

Genesis 2 has many stories in it. Generally it seems to me that whoever decided to divide the Bible into chapters just decided arbitrarily to do so. Anyway, I will try to deal with every story in Genesis 2 by itself.

The first part of Genesis 2 finishes the story of Genesis 1 and continues with the same idea of resting after the completion of a job well done. But the idea of a rest on the seventh day, the Shabat, is more encompassing then that. I talk about it in my e-book when I explain why I think that most of Ten Commandments are about the relationship between people. I will just mention here that I think this concept is not about the holiness of one specific day of the week but about the concept of letting go.

Earlier this week I attended a lecture by a company called Prova which was titled “Survive & Thrive”. The lecture dealt with the issue of stress and ways of dealing with it. One of things that were discussed is the way in which our brain works when it is overloaded. It happens to us all the time where we work on something and can’t see the solution. If we keep trying many times we will not be able to do find the solution. But if we take a break, go out, walk around, eat, suddenly it comes to us. The two sides of our brain were over communicating and in shock. Just stopping for a moment freed the over communication and our brain solved the problem.

I think this is the main lesson of the fact god rested on the seventh day and made it holy. The story tries to teach us that we need to know when to stop. We need to know to rest and enjoy what we have. We need to remember to energize. To get a new perspective on things and let our brain do the work for us. It is not really important if it is every week, every seven years or every jubilee. As long as you remember to do it often.

In my other blog I wrote about the concept of thinking time in a professional capacity. Taking a deliberate time to stop every week in order to just think. I think the story of the seventh day in the Bible tries to teach us to do that all the time in all facets of our lives.

Elad

 

Genesis 1 – The peak of creation

Photo by pasotraspaso

All of these concepts are important, but as I see it, the most important verses of Genesis 1 are not the verses where God creates the world, but where God creates human kind:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness … And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Genesis 1, 26-27).

There are two important things that we see here. First, is that humans were created last. Just as the saying goes: let’s save the best for last. People are the peak of creation. We tend to forget that. We tend to take the fact that we are the peak of creation for granted. Whether you believe in god or not, you must agree that the human kind is the most sophisticated species on earth. It has the most potential, both for additional creation and for destruction. How we use the limited time we have on earth is our choice, but I think we must recognize that we have some kind of responsibility, just from being on the top.

And if you read the passage I quoted above carefully, you would discover something more. Humans were created in the image and likeness of God. What does that sentence mean? I thought about this point a lot and I discuss in detail in my e-book. Why would a religious text, that tries to teach us about God’s greatness, tells us that we are like God. It does not make sense.

But if you read the entire Bible and connect the different stories (as I hope to do here in this blog), you understand that the Bible is not about God. It is about humans. It tries to give us lessons about life. And one of those lessons is that each and every one of us is divine.

And if we are divine, each and every one of us, what does that mean?

It means that we have the ability to choose and that brings responsibility but it also means that we should respect other people. Because each and every one of us, is a little God by himself.

Elad

Genesis 1 – Breaking the task down

The story in Genesis 1 is also very practical. How many times in your life have you been faced with a very large task that you did not know how to handle? I know I have many times. And when you think about it, there really could not be a bigger task then creating the world.

The story tries to teach us a lesson that I always tried to teach when I conducted time management workshops. Break a big assignment into tiny steps. When you try to think about a big task as one big problem, many times you cannot deal with it. But when you think about as a number of small steps, it suddenly seems achievable.

Creating a world? Complicated! Creating the skies and the water? That is easier.

And this is not the only principle of time management in the story. Because according to the story, God does one more thing after each step. God enjoys it. Because during the third day, God stops and admires his job.

“and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1, 10).

When we start a complicated job and break it down into small tasks, it is important to reward yourself for small successes. You need to always keep the big picture in your mind, but still, when you succeed in finishing a small step, you should celebrate and appreciate what you have done.

Elad