It starts out so right it all sounds so good. You go to check it out — a job a shidduch a new couch.

The job sounds perfect. Your kind of hours. Your kind of people. Good pay. You go to check it out and they love you and you love them. You can’t believe how perfect everything is. It’s the answer to all your prayers. The reward for all your hard work and struggles.

The boss even remembers your grandparents.

You’re floating gliding. The sun is shining. You sing songs you thought you forgot years ago. You call a family member to share the good news. They start in on the questions.

“They’re really going to pay you that much an hour?”

“Is it really such an established place?”

“I don’t think Grandma and Grandpa ever knew that boss.”

“Maybe you should check it out better; sounds like a scam.”

You go back the next day to the same office and the door that looked so clean and polished yesterday suddenly looks fingerprint laden. The door buzzer’s not working so the secretary who looks like she just tumbled out of the dryer gets up from behind her desk to open the door. Instead of the grand greeting of yesterday you wait an hour in a wicker chair.

What in the world happened between yesterday and today? Could your senses be so un-fine tuned that you didn’t catch all this? Did fantasy ride roughshod over reality? Or did someone burst your bubble and send you on a wild trip down negativity lane?

This happens to me every so often. I recognize those eyes that say “Everything you think is true is not.” And it makes me wonder where “reality” and “fantasy” meet or extinguish each other.

I believe it happened in the desert with the spies. It was the same exact land of milk and honey G-d promised us. Only the spies saw giants and death. What the heart feels the eye sees. When this happens some poke and taunt. Some blame and shame.

“Couldn’t you see?” “Didn’t you know?” “You really had no idea?”

“Well but—” No you can’t explain it. You really don’t know what happened.

Maybe you really lost it this time. Maybe your judgment really isn’t what you think it is. Or maybe someone clouded your vision and the result is simple as the stone that when the sun shines on it it glitters and when the sun moves even a centimeter it returns to its old moldy self.

It could be in these times when we’re influenced to see the darker side of things that the “sun” — our inner ability to shine trust and faith on a situation or person — has moved a centimeter.

The Kotzker Rebbe says we should never let another person’s opinion or perception move us from our place of truth.

Adjust the heart and our eyes will see that it is the same stone.