A few weeks ago I was walking through a local mall and a new store caught my eye. It seemed to have an eclectic selection of clothing and accessories. I couldn’t see from the store window if it was just for women, for both men and women, or unisex (meaning that the clothes were for either men or women). There was a rack of items just outside the door and I wandered over to look at them. I wasn’t thinking of buying anything and hoped that the salesclerk wouldn’t see me, but she did and the age-old ritual began.
She said in a cheerful upbeat voice, “Hi! Is there anything I can help you find?”
I replied in a much more reserved way, “No thank you, I was just looking at this shirt.” I really was looking at a shirt and wondering who decided that flannel nightshirts were the next best trend in office-wear for women, when I heard her say, “Yeah, those shirts are awesome!”
Now, I am usually quick to respond to comments that rub me the wrong way and using “awesome” in this context had definitely hit one of my hot-buttons. I pressed my lips tightly together to stop myself from saying, “Sunsets are awesome; mountains are awesome; hurricanes are awesome; G-d is awesome. This shirt is not awesome! It’s just a shirt!”
But as I was walking away, new thoughts filled my mind. Why did her use of “awesome” cause such a strong response in me? Why didn’t I challenge her use (or misuse) of the word “awesome”? What could I do to understand and manage the negative thoughts that popped into my head? How could I calm my inner-grammarian the next time I heard someone use a word in a way that I disagreed with?
To answer my questions, I started to think about the shirt. Not just the existence of the shirt, but all the things that had to happen for that shirt to be in the mall at that time and place, just when I was walking by. A clothing designer had to design the shirt, choose the fabric and make a sample. A fabric designer had to design the fabric that the shirt-designer chose. A clothing-buyer had to see a sample-shirt and decide that it was worth manufacturing and selling in his or her store.
Whoa! That’s a lot of moving pieces just to get that shirt to the hangar on the rack where I saw it, and I haven’t even touched on all the jobs that were created along the way for this process to occur.
Now, this is a spiritual column and so far I have been sharing my thoughts on something quite mundane: a flannel shirt. Bear with me for a few more moments as I share a bit of Jewish thought with you. One of our central and guiding prayers includes the phrase “…the Lord our G-d, the lord is one.” Through my studies, I have learned that this is a “oneness” that we mere humans have difficult grasping because we live as individuals, but as I understand it we are all a part of G-d and everything in existence is a part of G-d.
Looking at the world through this lens I can see quite clearly that everything really is awesome…including that shirt.
