Our Sages taught that “there are some who can acquire their share in the world to come in the mere span of one hour.” Jewish mystics remind us of a remarkable numerical linkage. The biblical lifespan is 70 years. 70×365 days is 25,550. Multiply the number of our days by 24, and our total number of hours on earth is just a little over 613,000 – a correspondence with the 613 mitzvot, in order to teach us that every hour of our lives should be concerned with fulfilling God’s will a thousandfold!
I do not remember where I saw it but the following story is an amazing metaphor for life.
Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course.
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds – twenty-four hours times sixty minutes time sixty seconds. Every night it writes off as lost whatever of this you have failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no over draft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it erases the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against "tomorrow." You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success.
The clock for every one of us keeps running. The days, the hours, the minutes – and yes, even the seconds quickly move at their unstoppable pace. But we can change the course of our lives even in a small fraction of time as a second. Perhaps that’s why it’s called a “second” – because it gives us a second chance to rectify our mistakes, to redirect our goals, to redefine our values, to become better versions of who we are from the perspective of who we could be.
Just a second, after all, is what the Olympics teach us makes the difference between winning the gold or weeping for what might have been.
By Rabbi Benjamin Blech - The Olympics' Jewish Message
