The Power Of Holding Hands

Rabbi Harold Kushner

             I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl playing in the sand.  They were hard at work building an elaborate sandcastle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages.  Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand.  I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what happened to all their hard work.  But they surprised me.  Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands and sat down to build another castle.  I realized that they taught me an important lesson.  All the things in our lives, all the complicated structure we spent so much time and energy creating, are built on sand.  Only our relationships to other people endure.  Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up.  When that happens, only the person who has a hand to hold on to will be able to laugh.