Count Your Blessings: What Moshe Rabbeinu Taught Us

In Va'etchanan, we receive invaluable life wisdom. Moshe, beseeching Hashem for permission to enter the Land of Israel, doesn't plead for mercy because of the great deeds he performed; nor does he remind God that He Himself had called Moshe a loyal servant. He hinges his request on nothing besides the fact that Hashem acts in ways that are inscrutable, acting mercifully when He so chooses, and granting undeserved gifts, even to those who cannot lay claim to them. Moshe says, "I fall into the latter." 

Asking Hashem for a free gift, something he does not deserve, he typifies what a truly happy man is. One who is happy does not feel he needs life to be any way other than it is to merit joy; rather, the state of mind he had, and inculcated in others, is what gave him the strength and resolve to ever so dignifiedly lead and be a true "eved Hashem," servant of God. 

Two famous speeches come to mind, inspiration for their humility, and promise for a better tomorrow. 

Lou Gehrig, in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, called himself "the luckiest man on the face of this earth," counting each of his blessings, focusing on how good he had it, and not - in his words, "the bad break," he had got. 

Another athlete, surely less famous, Jim Valvano, basketball player, coach and broadcaster, resounded the very same message, in the throes of his final fight against cancer, implored his listeners, "Don't give up, don't ever give up." 

The full text: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” And that’s what I’m going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. And if you see me smile and maybe give me a hug cause that’s important to me, too. But try if you can, to support, whether it’s AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease."

It is ever so poignant when people, our heroes, instead of focusing on themselves, and their gripes, turn their attention to helping others, not seeing themselves as the focus, but rather, in stark contrast, how they can give, and use their last minutes to pass the torch rather than quenching the light they deem their own.