I met new local friends last Friday night. Afterward, they told me they believed our meeting was ‘bashert'.
I agreed.
Have you ever heard of 'bashert'? It’s a Yiddish word which means ‘destiny’, or ‘it was meant to be’.
Many people use it to encapsulate the idea of a soul mate, as in “looking for my bashert”. But the concept goes far beyond match-making. It’s about life.
Do you believe that the challenges you face, the people you meet and even your mistakes are random? That life is an orchestra without a maestro?
Or do you believe that G-d has a plan for you? That the Divine has placed each of us here with a destiny, and that every moment of every day is the unfolding of that Grand Plan?
In other words: Does life have inherent meaning? Or is it intrinsically meaningless, and we just occasionally fool ourselves by attaching subjective meaning to random events?
The 'bashert mindset’ is faith in Divine Planning. Believing in bashert is believing that all aspects of my life have meaning. It’s also the faith that my job is to find – and actualize – the productive purpose that G-d has buried in the event I’m facing.
So, when you're faced with a nasty customer or obnoxious boss, when life at home presents you with a stressful dilemma, the 'bashert mindset’ counsels "Take a breath and choose wisely; this is all part of your Divinely- destined journey. Make this next step a step forward."
What does this means for two people who ‘serendipitously’ meet? It means that they should guide the meeting to a productive place, making it an encounter that furthers their own respective journeys, and hopefully benefits the larger community.
The meeting may appear random, but when you believe in 'bashert' there's no such thing.
Bashert is the belief that G-d gives you a life full of opportunities for growth.
It’s also the belief that opportunities are only half the equation. We are co-Creators in this life we’re given.
G-d gives us the opportunities.
The rest steps are up to us.