Someone showed me a very interesting optical exercise a few months back. It’s a black-and-white picture of a person’s face. The face is complete except for the nose which is represented instead by three small dots.

You stare at the 3 dots in the picture for 60 seconds and then look away at the ceiling or a blank wall. What happens is that you’ll see the entire face optically reproduced on the wall or ceiling.

The idea is that by focusing on just these 3 dots in the center of the face the entire picture gets completely mentally recorded without us even being aware of it.

Applied to life:

A girl comes over not dressed according to halachah. She comes from a religious home but has chosen to leave the path of her parents. You’re making a wedding in one week and you’d like to invite her to share in your simchah. You describe the crowd that will be there and ask that she come dressed appropriately. You make accompanying motions with your hands — skirt till here shirt till here sleeves till there. She smiles and accepts. Because in your heart you’re not putting her down. You actually love her. You don’t focus on her jeans and the way she’s dressed. You focus on the point. The point of pintele Yid the point in the middle of the soul. The essence.

Someone says “She’s going to feel all alone at the wedding” and you say “Not if she’s next to me the whole time.”

You create the picture of who she is by focusing on this point. Then she too begins to see herself in this way because this is who she really is.

There’s a woman called “FlyLady” who teaches home management. Her theory is that if the sink is spotless and shiny then everything else will fall into place. This may sound crazy but if you think about it the sink is the starting point from where all mess begins. If a sink is clogged up with dishes then the next utensil or dish a person uses will get thrown into the “what-the-heck-it’s-a-mess-anyway pile and from there an entire mountain picture builds up painted with mess lethargy and hopelessness.

I know a bochur who’s completely strict about hechsherim. He is what one nowadays might call “modern” but he doesn’t move a hairsbreadth from his focus on the highest standard of kashrus.

He can’t go too far from frum areas because he can’t guarantee that food meeting his kashrus standards will be available there. He can’t eat in most restaurants so he’s out of malls. He doesn’t eat in just anyone’s home so he is usually in safe territory. He shops in only certain food stores.

His entire picture of his life revolves around this one focus or point which keeps him out of many places.

The other day I speak to a friend. She is totally focusing on the dread of her day which could ultimately lead to dread of life in general. Nothing out-of-the-ordinary dreadful just standard hardships and challenges. We discuss how to get out of the muck. I tell her about the picture with the 3 dots in the nose and how by focusing on those 3 dots an entire picture is created in the mind. We decide to pick 3 intervals of 10 minutes in the day to do something that brings complete joy. Looking at a tree. Sitting down. This in keeping with the theory that little things if focused on properly can build an entire picture of joy.

There is a lady who one might say has a hard hard life. Two blind sons and a daughter in a wheelchair. So how and why is she still smiling?

How is she the one who’s the warmest and sweetest on the day new neighbors move in?

I see her often at the Kosel with the special van built to carry her daughter’s wheelchair. She’s allowed to pull up inside the gates and park right next to “the Wall.”

I get the point.