We Hear what We Expect to Hear

Dear Friends, The world is so very, very beautiful.  And people -- oh my goodness -- people are all so incredibly magnificent and beautiful.  But sometimes they don't look that way to us.  Sometimes, for some of us, the world seems to be simply a 'setter of traps' and a 'place of confusion and pain'.  And sometimes, in some of our eyes, other people seem 'suspicious' and 'untrustworthy' and even 'downright ugly'.  And sometimes when another person cries out to us or yells at us, we are sure it is personal; we cannot imagine that perhaps their cry is coming from a delicate place inside them, and we fail to realize that the reason that the person is yelling at us, is because he or she believes that we alone can hear his or her pain. But when we shift our point of view -- when we take off the foggy glasses -- when we take the muddy cotton out of our ears -- we suddenly see and hear things in a different way.  And we realize that it wasn't the world or the people or the cries around us that were wrong.  It was only our perspective. Attached please find the shu-shine for the the Torah Portion of Emor: "We Hear what We Expect to Hear". May we all be blessed to see the world and people around us for all of their amazing beauty, and to hear the voices of those around us with a loving heart that embraces and understands the source of their words.. This Shu-Shine is dedicated in honor of my amazing son, Yair -- who is celebrating his Bar-Mitzvah this week and very much embodies - thank God - the values of love and kindness and understanding that make our world such a beautiful place. With Love and a Smile, ~Shu