The Clerk

I remember a movie I watched years ago that had a very funny scene that we can all relate to. At least, I think it was a movie. Maybe it was a show, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I just remember one scene where a guy has to get something stamped or mailed at some government office, so he waits patiently in line until #48652 is called. He walks up to the window and is greeted by a clerk who had less expression on his face than the wall. Guy hands his stack of papers to the clerk, who simply looks at them with a blank expression. He asks Clerk to stamp his papers. Clerk, whose reaction time is excruciatingly slow, seems to go into a deep meditation before he answers: “I can’t stamp these papers. They’re stapled.”

Guy fumbles to remove the staple, but no luck. He asks Clerk for a staple remover, and receives the Stare of Utter Boredom and Stupidity for a good two minutes, while Clerk is slowly smacking his gum. As Clerk suddenly switches back into “on” mode, he responds, “Sorry, the office is closed. Come back tomorrow,” and lowers the window shade.

Completely dumbfounded, Poor Guy looks at the clock on the wall, and sure enough, it’s exactly 5:00 pm. “But, wait! I’m here! Please, can’t you just stamp my papers?!!” Poor Guy tries desperately to reach through the little hole at the bottom of the glass window so he raise the window shade and strangle Clerk the Jerk. Miraculously, Clerk the Jerk developed super powers and flew out of the office in the blink of an eye.

“I missed having my papers stamped by one minute!” Poor Guy lamented. He couldn’t get over his frustration as he dragged himself back to his car in bitter defeat. “Well, at least I can try again tomorrow,” he consoled himself. “I’m going to get there nice and early…”

Didn’t we all have experiences like this one? Weren’t there many times when we needed to get something urgent taken care of and we just missed the opportunity? This just happened to me last week- I ordered something from a health food store in Tel Aviv, and they shipped it on time. However, I couldn’t get to the post office (G-d forbid they would ship it to my house!) because it was summer break and the kids had me on the verge of insanity. Anyhow, by the time I sent my dear friend over there because there was just no way I was able to do it, those post office people had shipped my item back to the store!

Okay, I admit- they held it for two weeks, and I tried getting it a month later. But you get my point.

These days, many of us are in severe procrastination mode. It reminds me of when I was in high school. I knew the test was coming a week or two ahead of time, but my overbooked social schedule simply did not allow time for meaningless things, such as studying. So I did what most teenagers and college students do; I waited until the last minute and pulled a half-nighter. I couldn’t pull an all-nighter because I knew I wouldn’t be able to function the next day.

All of those “in the know,” meaning the Gedolim, are frantically doing what they can to wake the masses out of their Facebook comas. They are letting us know that the world as we know it is about to make drastic changes. They want us to see that the good and evil in the world are becoming clearer, and we need to choose which side we want to end up on.

Hashem is also turning up the volume on His messages. It doesn’t take a prophet to see that the world cannot continue on this path. With murderous fanatical groups like ISIS (or ISIL as the politically correct imbeciles now call them,) a global mass pandemic threatening all of us (Ebola), and the 2016 Presidential election insanity beginning, it seems that the world is heading towards the point of no return.

Instead of doing teshuva as if our lives depended on it (which they do,) many people are behaving like ostrich/teenager hybrids, as if reality doesn’t exist and will never affect them as long as they remain oblivious to current events. These people prefer to lose time going out for leisurely dinners, vacations, shopping trips, and watching hours and hours of mind programming (TV) instead of re-prioritizing their lives.

Do you know what will happen when reality finally catches up with them? It will be a head-on collision. They will be so caught off-guard that they won’t be able to end up on the winning side.

I don’t know about you, but I feel so much pressure to get as much done as I can each day, that I simply cannot imagine how people can take it easy in such a world. There is always one more person to help, one more mitzvah to do, one more Tehillim to read.

When The Procrastinators (doesn’t that sound like a rock band?) wake up and realize that they’ve missed their opportunity, they’re going to run towards the heavenly clerk’s office and pound on the window, begging the clerk to stamp their papers to Olam Haba.

But the clerk will simply look at them, point to the clock, and say, “Sorry. We gave you almost 6,000 years to make teshuva. Time’s up.” And the dreaded window shade will drop.

After that happens, there will be no tomorrow to try again.

Now’s the time. Let go of the materialistic lifestyle and make your life about holiness and serving Hashem. I once heard a quote that sums up this concept perfectly: “The greatest regret is to know that you could have done something, and didn’t do it.”

May Hashem bless us that we all end up on the winning team; the team that has the joy of greeting the Moshiach and witnessing the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, speedily and in our days, Amen!