"Jack" or "Isaac"

Posted on January 05, 2019 by Reuven Peretz, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

PICTURE THIS: Jack walks at 8am out of his house in a rush to his car barely saying bye to his wife and kids, while on his way he almost trips on a piece of dirt on the ground. As he finishes cursing the whole world for that, he finally gets to his car and struggles to open door, since after all it is -5 degrees below zero, isn’t it, so in a last intense attempt to open the door he manages to get in his car and start the engine.

Driving to work still irritated about the weather and the difficulty with his car, he gets cut by another driver pretty nasty and Jack uses his entire vocabulary to express his dismay on the driving style of his fellow peers on the road.

Entering the building at work he has to show his ID to the guard since no one is allowed to enter the work facility without ID. Jack gets more and more frustrated. He works more than 10 years at this underpaying average job of his and still the guard needs to check his ID. In the elevator to the 21th floor he involves the others next to him and doesn’t make a secret of his opinion of how he feels about the people who head his organization.

But then he arrives at his desk and the nightmare isn’t over. His keyboard is all wet because someone dropped his coffee on his computer. No sign, no note, nothing. Jack smashes the keyboard on the ground, raising his head and hands to the heavens above and screams within himself “why is this happening to me?!”

Then he sits down, calls the IT manager and “commands” him to rush over, and so starts his day at work, feeling miserable, frustrated and lonely.

Coming back home 9 hours later his young children jump up to him and crave for his attention. “Not now” Jack mumbles to his offspring and dissapointed they decide to play a game outside.

Deborah, Jack’s wife, stares at her husband and secretly hopes to get a glimps of his attention but Jack is already in a different world, letting him self fall on the sofa to engage in a deep deep sleep while he wishes to forget that this day ever happened.

AND NOW PICTURE THIS: Isaac walks at 8 am out of his house after he gave a firm hug to his entire family . He rushes to his car while he barely avoids tripping on a piece of dirt on the ground. “Unbelievable” he says to himself “thank G’d I didn’t fall on the ground, I could have hurt myself pretty badly”.

After a struggle of a few minutes in the freezing cold he finally manages to get into his car, while he laughs inside himself as if saying to his car “I won, my friend!”

On his way to work he almost gets hit by a car who seems to have mistaken the freeway for race track and Jack spontenous reaction is “Wow for the second time in a row I got miraculously saved today!”

Arriving at the building of his job he kindly greets the guard, inquires about his welbeing and his family and then proclaims with a smile “good thing you check my ID everyday, gives me a chance to chat with you!”

The packed elevator which takes Isaac to his working space is filled with people from all kinds of companies but they all know Isaac. After greeting them with a warm hello he then tells them about the two instances he was miraculously saved that day from getting hurt.

When Isaac reaches his desk he notices that somebody mistook his keyboard for the sink in the kitchen. The whole keyboard is soaken wet and has the smell of coffee. He quicly gives a call to the IT manager on the floor and request for a new keyboard. As he’s on the phone with the IT manager, he expresses his appreciation that he’s always ready for him and also takes time to learn about all the new stuff that’s flying in IT-land. “Now I know why some guy spilled coffee on my desk, so I could talk to you!”

And so Isaac starts of his day.

As Isaac drives home nine hours later he stops by his uncle Joseph to say hello. He hasn’t seen him for so long. He notifies his wife that he’s going to be a little later.
On his way back from his uncle to the car he walks past a flower shop and uses the oppurtunity to buy a rose for his wife, and as he is at it, he also buys a few chocolate bars for the kids.

Isaac arrives home, his kids jump at his neck to give a hug while he shows them the candy, and the rose he gently presents to his wife who happily accepts the gesture.

He then apologizes to them and says that he worked very hard that day and would like to have a short nap before they will start dinner. Of course nobody objects and Isaac lays down his head to rest while he thanks G’d for all the blessings in his life.

NO DOUBT, the two stories are very extreme, and maybe oversimplified, in their own fashion. But I think we all can recognize or identify ourselves with one of the two characters. How would we define the most important factor that makes the two so different?

Jack is a person who puts himself in the centre. Every misfortune that befals him is a sad tale, a story that shows that “they are out there to get me”, he feels deprived, unfulfilled. Really in his mind everybody “owes” him everything, but nobody seems to grant him that right. Feeling this way, he developes an animosity towards his surroundings and even his most dearest people like his family cannot escape his craving for being the central point of all existence…

Isaac however has things differently. His life is one of oppurtunity to serve others, experiencing the good, experiencing the miracle. His focus is entirely not on himself, and on the other hand he does not neglect himself in any way. He lives dignified and with selfrespect. The secret as you may call it is, that instead of letting things just “happen” to him, he creates his own story around it. As so many before me have stated in various settings, it’s all about the story you create around the facts that occur in your life.

Story doesn’t mean here that you make things up just in order to give it a good explanation. Story here means that you consciously or subconsciously choose to emotionally put the emphasis on a certain interpretation of for example an event, conversation with someone or other experience. That emphasis that triggers your emotions, which subsequently triggers your respons.

It might be a nice exercise to observe yourself the coming days and evaluate the “stories” you have around things that happen to you.

Are you more of a “Jack” or an “Isaac”?

Let me know!!