By Yoni Schwartz
Rav Chaim Kanievsky
There was a certain man in Eretz Yisrael who lived in a peaceful area in a quiet apartment building. One day, as he entered the lobby, he saw furniture, beds, sofas, loveseats, recliners, and every kind of furniture imaginable filling the entire space. He had to weave between the various pieces of furniture just to squeeze through and get where he needed to go.
One of the residents had decided to open a furniture business in the lobby without consulting anyone else because renting a store was too expensive. The man went to Rav Chaim Kanievsky, ZT”L, and said, "This is eating me alive. I have to squeeze between beds, weave my way through furniture, and hear the commotion of customers when I just want to relax. I want to live a normal life. I want a normal lobby! What this person is doing is completely wrong, and the resentment is eating me alive. On some nights, I even have trouble falling asleep because of it. The chutzpah of this person is unbelievable!”
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Rav Chaim responded, “You're right. This man is wrong for doing what he's doing. You can take him to Beis Din, and you will probably win. However, it's always good to go above and beyond - to be mevater, to forgive. Sometimes the best thing is to give up on what we want, even when we're right.”
The man decided to take Rav Chaim’s words to heart and let it go, despite the difficulty. The next day, this man's son was having fun near one of the windows when he slipped and fell from the third floor. Luckily, one of the extra fluffy beds was there outside the building to break his fall. Had the man not listened to Rav Chaim and instead made a whole tumult, that bed would not have been there the next day to save his son's life. His son walked away unharmed, and the man came away having learned a valuable lesson about the destructive power of resentment -and the incredible greatness of letting things go.
Reprinted from the Parshas Noach 5786 email of Torah Sweets.