Just Do It

Leaping before thinking

I’ve long had a desire to jump out of an airplane. This was long before the Boeing 737 Max began providing that opportunity without warning. The idea of leaping from 10,000 feet down to the earth below has always enticed me for the adrenaline rush. So far, the ultimatums provided to me by both my wife and mother have prevented me from doing. But, I haven’t given up.

I recently started thinking about this again as I watch my son Cal get to know the world around him. He climbs any structure, leaps down from any high ledge, and generally aims himself for anything that is relatively dangerous. As a parent, it frightens me slightly but as a fellow thrill-seeker, I love it.

In part, I love it because of my professed desire to leap from things but also I love it because he expresses something that many of us stamp out within ourselves: doing without thinking. We’re all guilty to different degrees of overanalyzing, overthinking, and over-scrutinizing in our lives. In the name of maximizing efficiency, getting it “right”, or any other form of squeezing the most juice we can, our cerebral selves dominate our decision making.

I certainly do this and I see this in the gym where I work as well. People are afraid to try a new movement because they want to research it, understand the best way to do it, or watch an expert do it over and over again before they try. But the thing is, there are certain things in our lives that we just have to do. We have to throw caution to the wind and just try. We’ll probably screw up. We might make a fool of ourselves. But then, the next time (or times) that we do it and we succeed, that feeling that results is unparalleled.

Those last few sentences are an apt description of the Jewish people as they traverse through the desert. Always trying to figure things out, taking two steps forward and one step back, angering and then pleasing God, and ultimately reaching the promised land. One of the characteristics that gets them there, although it’s only brought to fruition by a later generation, is their intrepid spirit.

We see this a number of times throughout their journey with a turn of phrase that also appears in this week’s portion:

וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃

Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that God has spoken we will faithfully do (Exodus 24:7)

That bolded phrase in the Hebrew is better translated as “we will do and then we will listen/learn.” It is one of the catchphrases of the Israelite nation in their experiences after slavery and a real feather in their cap. They seemed to have had an innate ability to be willing to leap in without the need for much intellectual preparation.

The Meor Eynayim, Reb Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl (1730-1797) comments on this as follows:

מאור עינים, יתרו ג׳

וזהו שאמרו ישראל נעשה ונשמע רצה לומר נעשה העבודה ונטרח ואחר זה נבוא לעולם התענוג כדי שיהא חשוב לעבודה יצאה בת קול ואמרה מי גילה רז זה כו׳ לשון שמלאכי השרת כו׳ באמת הוא דבר גדול כי גם מלאכים הוא גם כן כך כי מתחילה צריך להתעורר בתשוקתו אל הקדושה והחיות מהבורא יתברך.

…we will do the Service and exert ourselves; and afterward we will come to the world of pleasure such that it will be considered Service. “A heavenly voice came out and said, ‘Who revealed this secret… the language the ministering angels [use] etc.” – in truth it is a great thing, for it is even so for the angels: first the must arouse their longing for the Holiness and the life-force from the Blessed Creator.

Bringing in a related piece, the Meor Eynayim shares that the Israelites have intuited a secret from the angelic beings. Namely, they have lived with the secret notion of preceding action to thought. Certainly, when you do the action first, it can be tiring and challenging but then you reach the other side. Once you’ve done it, the reward and pleasure is such that it’s considered equal to the work you’ve put in. Pleasure will equal the work. In other words, don’t think too much. Just do it and see what happens afterward.

I can’t tell you how many instances of life there’ve been where I have dragged my heels on something to do more “research” only to realize that the best research is action. We know that feeling and pleasure that ensues when we just lean in, act, and reap the emotional, physical, and spiritual rewards. Surely there are moments that require careful consideration and deliberate investigation. But other times, as the Israelites showed us generations ago and Cal continues to show me now, sometimes you got to just do it, maybe even from 10,000 feet.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!