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One day, so the story goes, a child was waiting in a hallway after school. He heard an odd noise: thunk, pause, thunk, pause, thunk, pause...

He followed the sound and found the school custodian lifting each chair in the classroom, turning it over, and setting it on a table.

"What are you doing?" asked the boy
"I’m turning over the chairs so I can clean the floor," answered the custodian. He sighed."Used to be, I’d come in and all the chairs were turned over. I had time then to polish the floor. It was a beautiful sight in those days."

"What happened?"
"I guess at some point the teachers quit telling the kids to turn them over, so now I spend a lot of time turning over the chairs. I don’t have as much time for cleaning the floors. The kids now don’t get to see the shiny floors we used to have."

The boy thought a lot about the custodian that night. The next day, he told his classmates and his teachers, he texted his friends, and he set the example by turning over his own chair. Each student could turn over his or her chair in a matter of seconds; it took little effort, especially when they thought of the janitor and of the beauty of the shiny floor. And soon, each student could see the shiny floor.

The result here is more important than a shiny floor, but the principle is the same. If all of us will turn over our own chairs, all of us – and the people who come and visit and don’t even have chairs here yet — will get to see the shiny floor.

If you appreciate Rabbi Fohrman's work, please partner with us to help support its dissemination. Our success comes one person at a time, and is ultimately measured in the actions that you take.

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