After the Inspiration

Monday, 8 Cheshvan 5787
From "MiShulchan Shlomo" · Issue 300 · Parshat Noach

Yaniv ZadokFrom the heart, for learning and for action

Inspired by the holy writings "MiShulchan Shlomo" (Issue 300, Parshat Noach) by our master and teacher the Yanuka, the Gaon Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda shlit"a, a hidden mystery of our generation.

You walk out of a great class. Or a wedding, after a deep conversation with an old friend. Or a conference, with a notebook full of notes. On the way home, in the car, your mind is racing. "Starting this week, I'm doing it." "Tomorrow I'm calling him." "From now on, every morning, ten minutes of..." And a week later, everything is exactly as it was.

If this sounds familiar, you are in very good company. It happens to almost anyone who has ever been moved by something.

And sometimes it is not even a class. It is a two-minute video someone sent to the group, about a father who did something simple and moving with his son. We watch, feel a pang, tell ourselves "I need that too." And scroll on. Our world is full of moments like that. We have never had so many chances to be moved. And the question is what is left of all that excitement by the end of the week.

🔥 Inspiration is a match

A match lights all at once. It illuminates everything, warm, alive. And after a few seconds it burns down to your fingers. And that is not a flaw in the match. That is what it is. It was never meant to light the room. It was meant to light a candle.

So it is with inspiration. It is not supposed to last a week. It is supposed to last long enough to light something small with it, something that stays lit afterward. The problem is never that the inspiration ends. The problem is that we did not light anything with it.

📜 Raised among the sages

In Pirkei Avot there is a short saying of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel: "All my days I grew up among the sages... and it is not study that is the main thing, but action." Notice who is saying it. Not someone who kept away from learning. Someone who grew up all his life among the greatest of his generation, surrounded by the deepest wisdom there is. And he is the one who says: understanding matters, but it is not the main thing.

There is real pleasure in the moment of "wow, that's true." That pleasure is good. But it is not the goal. The question is not how moved we were, but what we did with it. And there is something freeing in this too. You do not need to understand everything to begin. It is enough to light one candle.

🧱 Why is this so hard?

Because inspiration arrives as a feeling, and life waits for us as a habit. In the moment of excitement everything looks simple. But the next morning the same alarm clock is waiting for us, the same traffic, the same list. And habit is stronger than any feeling, because it already knows the way.

And so the most common mistake is to make a decision that is too big. "From now on, an hour every morning." A decision like that breaks on the third day, and with it breaks the confidence that we can change at all. And the secret is the opposite of what it seems: we do not wait for the feeling to come back in order to act. We act, and the feeling comes back. Someone who calls their mother once discovers that the second time they already want to.

🏢 On Sunday morning

Anyone who has taken part in a team-building day knows this. A whole day of good ideas, a board full of colorful sticky notes, and everyone leaves with energy. And on Sunday morning, the same meeting, the same habits, the same calendar.

The most important question at the end of a day like that is not "what did we learn." It is "what will we do differently on Sunday morning?" One thing. With the name of whoever is responsible and with a date. A team that leaves a team-building day with one decision that got done has gained more than a team that leaves with twenty ideas.

📝 Write it down before it burns out

One small thing that makes a big difference: write. Not the whole class. One sentence. "Tomorrow at eight in the evening I call Dad." With a day and a time. In a note on your phone, or on a piece of paper left on the desk.

The feeling will evaporate by tomorrow morning, that is how it goes. But the note will stay. And when it jumps out at you, it brings back, for a small moment, the match. What is not written down stays a feeling. What is written down begins to become a plan.

🔁 Even a match that went out

And what if a week has already passed, and nothing was lit? That is not the end of the story. You can go back to the same class, the same book, the same friend who said the sentence. Read again what you wrote. Sometimes on the second reading the match lights stronger than the first time, because now we know how easy it is to miss. There is no need to be ashamed of the matches that burned out. We are all full of them. We only need not to give up on the candle.

🎯 Which match to light

And if many things touch us in a week, and we cannot light a candle from all of them, how do we choose? One rule that works: choose the match that has a person in it. Not "be more patient," but "be patient with my daughter during homework time." Not "help others," but "call the neighbor who lost his job." A decision with a person's name in it is harder to forget. And usually, it is also the decision that changes the most.

🕯️ One candle a week

I am not sure I will manage to light a candle from every match. Most of them will still burn down between my fingers. But that is okay. We do not need to light a candle from every match. One candle a week is enough. And after a month there are four candles burning that were not there before. And when several candles are burning, the next match also lights in a brighter room. And whoever gets used to lighting discovers that the excitement itself grows deeper, because they already know it has somewhere to go.

So my question this week is simple: what is the last thing that touched you, and you have not yet lit anything with it?

Have a good and blessed day 🌹