Don't Look Down; Look Forward!

“Today, we will do something different.” With these words, a great sage stood up and led his disciples outside for a walk.

He led them to a deep ravine at the end of town. A narrow rope was stretched across the top of the ravine, and a huge crowd was gathered a short distance away. A tightrope walker holding a long balancing rod stepped off the rim of the ravine onto the rope and began to walk across. The crowd gasped in amazement as the tightrope walker made his way steadily along the quivering rope. When he finally reached the opposite rim of the ravine safely, the crowd responded with an audible sigh of relief and an enthusiastic round of applause.

The sage nodded gravely, turned around and started to walk away.

“Why did you bring us here today?” his disciples asked him. “What are we supposed to learn from the tightrope walker?”

“A very important lesson,” said the sage. “Walking a tightrope is a metaphor for life. Each of us is indeed walking a tightrope. Did you watch that tightrope walker? He was totally focused on what he was doing, and he was confident in his ability to do it. How did he do what he did? He never looked down; he only looked forward.”

It is natural to stop and look down. We succeed when we continue to look forward.

It’s an oft-told tale. Someone is on the roof of a tall building or crossing a rickety bridge, and then you hear someone say, “Don’t look down!” What happens next? The person looks down. The normal human reaction is to look down. Why is that?

One explanation is that we look down due to our negativity bias and threat detection systems. Our brains are looking for information in our environments that might be evidence of harm. When you hear the suggestion to not look down, you get a strong urge to look down and determine the nature of the threat. This happens in other situations. We rubberneck when we encounter a car accident, or we eavesdrop when we overhear an argument. Our brains are designed to prioritize negative information like this.

We look down when we should be looking ahead.

A few years ago, the late sage, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, was asked: "What would you say is life's most important question?" Without skipping a beat, he replied: “V’az mah - And then what?”

Rav Steinsaltz explained: "You see, it's easy to fly into a passion. But what happens after the passion is gone? And then what? Our children become Bat and Bar mitzvah with great excitement. And what happens thereafter? Can they remain committed to Judaism when no one is celebrating them anymore? Weddings, nowadays, resemble Hollywood-style sound and light shows. And then what? Can our marriage continue to grow even when the sound of "here comes the bride" has been replaced with the sound of a baby crying? We graduate from school and celebrate our achievements with great pride? And then what? Can we continue to study with devotion, to live with passion and to do good with conviction?"

As we celebrate graduations this time of year, it is important to stop and celebrate all that the graduates have accomplished. They should all take pride in their many successes. At the same time, don’t only stop and look down. Look ahead and envision how much more there still is to achieve and conquer.

I am very fond of the story of an individual who attended a silent Quaker service. During the worship, he turned to an usher and asked, “When does the service begin?” The usher looked at him and said, “Sir, we believe that the real service begins when the service inside the sanctuary ends, and we all go live with our fellow human beings on the outside.”

V’az mah – And then what? What’s next for each of us to accomplish?

Congratulations to all the graduates! We’re proud of all you have accomplished so far. Each of us has accomplishments every day. The important thing to keep in mind is that when we finish, we are just getting started.