Have you ever been engrossed in your phone, and then your phone dies, leaving you feeling at a loss?
The office we run out of the door to in the mornings no longer needs us there. The big dinner we are getting a babysitter for has been postponed. The vacation we have been packing for is not happening. The basketball game we are watching with friends on Sunday is not taking place.
As we slowly, reluctantly, relinquish our plans, we are being forced to pause all our usual activities, and spend all of our time at home. At home, with our families, and at home, with ourselves.
We don’t have the class, the dance, or the meeting, to attend.
We have so little left of the reality that we know. We are left, at home, feeling the void left by all the priorities in our life that take up our time and our space.
But when your phone dies, and you experience withdrawal, you lift your eyes off the screen and you are forced to see the world around you, the world that is really right in front of you.
In this void that we now have in our long, socially distant days, something beautiful is taking shape.
Because, when we don’t have the external distractions that take up our time from morning to night, we have only internal realities left.
We can’t follow the sports games, we can’t clock in at work, we can’t even go out for dinner. And now, we can finally think.
We can think about ourselves, about our relationships. We can connect with ourselves, we can connect with others, and we can connect with Hashem.
And while for so many of us, life has been put on a complete pause, it really just has begun.
Our direction in life has taken a drastic spin, from facing outward to facing inward. From money, success, and entertainment, to ourselves, our neshama (soul), to truth. We are currently, as a people, acutely divinely aware.
And as we focus on our connection with our true selves, we are doing a global cleansing of our society. We are paving the way for a new, truer way of life. We are priming ourselves for the coming of Moshiach.
