Expectations

By: Dovid Greenwald

Sydney Australia

On a bright sunny day in New York City in August 2011, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was interviewed by ESPN radio host Michael Kay (“The voice of the N.Y. Yankees”). During the course of the interview, Eli claimed that he thought he was in the same “class” as the great Tom Brady. The media critics immediately pounced all over him; criticizing him that he is not an ‘elite’ quarterback, and that there is a big gap between Eli and Brady’s class.

Well now, just a couple of months later, Eli has certainly proven his point. He has shown the critics their giant error, as he has propelled the Giants to yet another Super Bowl appearance! On the road to there, he led his team to hammer the Atlanta Falcons, run over the defending champion Green Bay Packers in their own building, and finally he ran out of San Francisco victorious in an epic defensive battle. Oh and how can I forget…during the regular season he threw for nearly 5000 yards (despite all the injuries the team faced)! He also broke the single season fourth quarter touchdown passes record, with 16 of them this season!

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Sometimes in life, we have to set goals for ourselves and raise our own expectations we have for ourselves, to push us to succeed over the top. The same can be said was with Eli Manning this offseason. He raised the bar for himself and through that he was able to succeed even beyond all expectations. However sometimes, the expectations are already there for us, and our job is to live up to them, no matter what. We can see the second mode illustrated beautifully, in the following story: Rabbi Chonye Morosov once walked into a furniture store to purchase some furniture for his new home. On the first floor of the store he saw some nice pieces of furniture, some priced up to 1000 rubel (the currency in Russia). He then proceeded to view the furniture located on the second floor. There he saw beautiful pieces even nicer than the ones on the first floor. Some of those were priced at 3000 rubel. He then went up to the third floor and saw the nicest pieces he had seen on the second floor, but after a quick glance at the price tag, he was shocked to see it was only 500 rubel! Confused, he asked the employee for an explanation in the price difference. The employee kindly explained to him the following: There are regular pieces, elegant pieces and very elegant pieces. If a regular piece gets damaged, it only goes down in price slightly. If an elegant piece gets damaged, it goes down in price even more. If a very elegant piece gets even slightly dented, the price slides all the way down. Thus the 500 rubel pieces you see here, actually were once priced at 3000 rubel before the slight dent on the bottom came about!

Rabbi Marasov taught an amazing lesson he learned from this story: If a regular person makes a mistake, then it’s not such a big deal, and he only goes “down in price” slightly. However, if a Chassid has even the minutest errors, it affects him enormously. This is because the expectations for him are far greater than the average “commoner”. As Chassidim, we must understand what we represent and have to recognize our place where we are holding, and be aware of the consequences of even our slightest microscopic mistakes. The expectations are extremely high for us, because we are indeed – Chassidim.