A Powerful Middos Enhancer – Skip Step Two

By Jonathan Rosenblum

Mishpacha readers could be forgiven for concluding that most of my time on trips to America is spent sponging rides from anyone who expresses so much as a word of appreciation for any column I have ever written. Yet what I inevitably gain from those rides is much more valuable than the cab fare I save.

Recently, I was met at the Denver airport by Mrs. Aliza Bulow, a writer, speaker, and educator, whose work I had admired from afar. She had expressed an interest in speaking to me while I was in Denver, and it turned out that she would be dropping off her daughter at the airport just as I would be exiting the baggage claim area.

As it happened, I preceded Mrs. Bulow. She did not arrive at the airport until half an hour before her daughter’s flight. By that time, there was no hope of her daughter returning to Detroit with the suitcase she had brought. “I’ll pick it up at Pesach,” she told her mother matter-of-factly. Meanwhile, there was still the matter of getting through security control with two children in strollers with just half an hour before flight time.

Clearly, she would have to rely on the kindness of many strangers to do so. (She did make the flight.)
I remarked to Mrs. Bulow that both she and her daughter had seemed preternaturally calm about a situation that would have tested my nerves to the breaking point.

In response, she told me that she has a rule in her family called “Skip step two.”

My ears picked up in anticipation of learning the magic formula for never losing your cool. She explained that in most situations that try us, first comes the triggering event — e.g., a dentist appointment that goes way overtime when you have to make it to the airport. Then you lose yourself in either panic or anger. Finally, you realize that you have to deal with the new situation one way or the other. Since you are going to have to deal with the situation eventually, why not just skip step two?

Mrs. Bulow gave me another example of “skipping step two” from the same daughter’s year in seminary in Israel. She and her roommates had been instructed that their closets were old and not overly stable and should not be moved. Nevertheless the roommates decided to rearrange all the beds in the room, which entailed moving the closets as well. Sure enough, the closet of Mrs. Bulow’s daughter collapsed and all her clothes were strewn around the room.

When her roommates came to tell her what had happened, she just went upstairs and put her stuff back. “Aren’t you even angry?” they asked.

“How would that help me?” she replied, without breaking stride.

Don’t we all waste a lot of time and energy losing our cool over things we are going to have to deal with anyway? Why not just skip step two?

Originally published in Mishpacha.