“…that you may look upon it…” (Bamidbar 15:39)

I was having a discussion with someone from the shul this week and the conversation turned to a common human tendency: when things go wrong, we immediately notice and complain. Yet when things go right, we often take them for granted, assuming that is how it is supposed to be. We all know it’s unrealistic to expect things to always go the way we wish. Still, many of us treat good outcomes as the default, while viewing any difficulty as Hashem doing something negative to us (though He is definitely sending us a message).

The classic question – “Is the cup half empty or half full?” – illustrates the point perfectly. Both answers are factually correct. The difference lies in which part we choose to focus on, the positive or the negative. In life, too, many people focus on the negative while barely recognizing the positive.

A couple once came to me with a shalom bayis issue. The wife was hurt that her husband rarely complimented her appearance, her cooking, or anything she did. The husband responded, “I don’t compliment her because she always does everything well. That’s her normal standard. I only speak up when something is wrong, because that’s out of character for her.” I gently explained to the wife that, in his mind, his silence was a compliment. But I turned to the husband and said, “Your thought is beautiful, but it must be vocalized. She needs to hear that you see and appreciate her excellence.”

The same pattern appears in the workplace. A man once complained to his wife, “I have this one worker who’s always late and sloppy”. His wife asked, “How many workers do you have who are reliable and diligent?” He responded, “About 50”. She replied, “So what exactly are you complaining about?”

These situations are familiar to all of us. The root issue is not the events themselves, but our disposition – how we view reality. And we can learn to change that.

In the beginning of the parsha, the spies surveyed Eretz Yisrael and returned with an overwhelmingly negative report. Yehoshua and Calev did not deny the difficulties they saw, but reframed them as just challenges that could be overcome because Hashem would be with them. They saw the same land, but focused on its goodness and potential.

The mitzvah of tzitzis addresses this. The Torah tells us “Do not stray after your heart and after your eyes…” Rashi notes that first the eyes see and then the heart desires. If so, why does the verse list the heart before the eyes? A beautiful answer is that our inner disposition—our heart—determines what our eyes will notice and focus on. If the heart is pulled toward physical pleasures, the eyes will zero in on physical things, leading us to sin. Our challenge is to change our disposition in advance, so that our eyes will see the positive causing us to do the right things.

Chazal tell us that one of the strings of our tzitzis is supposed to be techeles because its color reminds us of the sea, which reminds us of the sky, which in turn reminds us of the Throne of Glory. Simply looking at the tzitzis and thinking of Hashem does not happen automatically; it requires conscious reflection and a desire to find meaning and understanding in life. That is why it is so important to begin each day by presetting our mindset and thinking: “What do I want to notice today?” Instead of counting red lights, we can count green lights. We may find out that we are better off than we realized.

If a person concentrates on one more blessing in shemoneh esrei today than he did yesterday, he is growing in his ruchnius. He may not be perfect, but he is moving in the right direction. By continuously training ourselves to notice the good around us, we become better people both in our relationships with our fellow man and with our Creator.