Dear Reader,
A
workshop participant shared this story of how contribution to someone else
unexpectedly comes around:
In
Crown Heights, there was a Jewish man named Yankel, who owned a bakery. He
survived the concentration camps, and always said, "You know why it is
that I’m alive today?"
"I
was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train being taken to
Auschwitz. Night came and it was deathly cold in that boxcar. The Germans would
leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end
without any food, and no blankets to keep us warm," he said.
"Sitting
next to me was this beloved elderly Jewish man from my hometown. He was
shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around
him to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged
him to hang on. All night long, I kept the man warm this way.
I
was tired, and freezing cold myself. My fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop
rubbing heat into that old man’s body. Hours and hours went by until finally,
morning came and the sun began to shine. When there was some light in the
boxcar, I looked around to see the other people.
To
my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies. All I could hear was deathly
silence. "Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night. They died
from the cold.
Only
two people survived: the old man and me. The old man survived because somebody
kept him warm...and I survived because I was warming someone else.”
When
you warm other people’s hearts, you remain warm yourself. When you seek to
support, encourage and inspire others, then you discover support, encouragement
and inspiration in your own life as well.
May
this story inspire you to experience the magic of priceless contribution to
others.
Warm
regards,
Rohan 