When You Sit and Dwell on a Misbehavior, You Make It Official
TRUE STORY
I witnessed a couple acting with terrible anger and hatred in front of their children, who were traumatized. I made a joke of it. “It’s not real! They really love each other and are respectable people. Just once in a while they get carried away! It’s nothing!” When you sit and dwell on a misbehavior, you make it official.
And now it becomes hard to get rid of it, since you gave yourself a Shtempel (label) of a bad person or a Ka'asan or a nervous wreck. On the other hand, when you brush it off and move on and ignore, it dwarfs the problem.
כִּי הִשְׁחִית כָּל בָּשָׂר אֶת דַּרְכּוֹ עַל הָאָרֶץ (ו, יב)
“Don’t Be M’tamei Your Neshama!”
Believe it or not, sometimes saying this is poison! My father Zatzal told me that before Bain HaZemanim, R’ Michoel Ber Weissmandel Zatzal would cry out to his Bachurim (from Nitra Yeshiva, in secluded Mount Kisco) “You’re going to the Treife city of New York. Watch your eyes!” I think that saying this is beautiful and highly appropriate, and is a Mitzva Rabba.