CHANGE IS DEPICTED MORE ACCURATELY BY A VIDEO THAN BY A SNAPSHOT

Hello,eku imura odun o.

Imagine the Photograph of the scene showing the tortoise in the famous story of the tortoise and the rabbit. The catch is that real life is not reflected accurately by a series of snapshots; it is correctly depicted only by a smooth and continuously running video. Watching a video of the race between the rabbit and the tortoise would quickly have shown the rabbit outpacing the tortoise from the start and enjoyed the lead for the most part of the race. It is easy to be confused or even misled when trying to interpret reality with a sequence of snapshots where the tortoise is shown to have enjoyed most of the lead. Jews have traditionally benefited economically by their intuitive rejection of the snapshot view of the world and the mass manipulation it allows Jews were always more likely to view life through a video rather than through a dishonest sequence of snapshots. Their familiarity with the approach to recounting events accustomed them to seeing the moving timeline of history and to the ever-repeating laws of cause and effect. Jewish faith educated its devotees to distrust superficial appearances. Jews want to see what led to this moment and what follows from it. They never take a snapshot at its face value. Remember the mantra, everything is constantly in motion, and change is perpetual.  For some approaching changes, as for a fast- approaching and difficult ball in baseball, you must step backward to give yourself more room to swing at it. For other approaching changes, as for a sweet, slow lob, you must step forward to embrace and exploit it as quickly as possible. The trick, of course, is telling the difference between the two. For that trick, two useful props exist: (1) recognizing and remaining anchored to those things that never change, and (2) improving your ability to see future trends that so influence just how you should best modify the present instant. I hope you have learned or will learn one or two things from this year`s posts? Finally, we celebrate with you if your birthday is in December. We wish you another year of peace, love and good health.

Have a wonderful year everyone! Odun a yabo fun gbogbo wa o!

Eric O. Thompson

YAJ President