Two weeks ago, I woke up, opened my eyes, and felt like the entire room was spinning. The ceiling was moving, the floor was shifting, and the walls felt like they were collapsing around me.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, but the spinning continued. Nausea flooded through me.
I woke my wife. “Shevy,” I whispered. “The room is spinning.”
I assumed it would pass quickly. Maybe I was dehydrated or perhaps I’d gotten up too quickly. I lay back down and waited for it to stop.
It only got worse.
For the next two weeks, I was plagued by dizziness. I could hardly walk or get out of bed. Even standing felt impossible. I davened lying down and put on tefillin in bed.
I never thought about how much of my day-to-day life depends on balance until that balance completely evaporated, leaving me unable to function in any way, shape, or form.
Eventually, an ENT doctor diagnosed me with vertigo—a tiny disturbance in the inner ear that can wreak havoc on one’s world.
I had plenty of time to think as I lay in bed all those long days, and I kept coming back to what the Baal Shem Tov teaches: everything we experience and observe in life provides a spiritual lesson for us to ponder and absorb.
So I began to wonder … what if the real vertigo isn't in the ear?
We live in a generation where people worship fame, wealth, status, power, and influence. We admire people simply because they are rich and famous. Meanwhile, the truly admirable people go unnoticed.
The mother who makes sure she raises her children with love and patience even though she’s overworked and exhausted gets zero applause. The simple Jew who gets up early every morning to go to shul before work does so without fanfare. Those who manage to remain kind despite immense struggles go without acknowledgement.
These people are all around us and we barely see them.
But Heaven does.
The Talmud tells a story of a rabbi’s son who experienced clinical death but was revived. When he awoke, his father asked, “What did you see?”
“I saw an upside-down world,” the son answered. “Those who were honored here were insignificant there, and those who were ignored here—they were exalted.”
“My son, you did not see an upside-down world,” the father explained. “You saw the world clearly, as it really is.”
I pondered this as I lay in my bed, the world spinning around me: What we consider reality is actually the distortion. We are the dizzy ones. Our generation has lost its spiritual equilibrium. We’ve become so intoxicated by money, image, ego, and public approval that we no longer know what truly matters.
But Torah stays steady and reminds us what is real. Shabbat. Kosher. Tefillin. Davening. Studying Torah. Honesty. Integrity. Kindness. Faith.
Lying there in bed, day after day, I felt as if G-d was whispering something to me:
“The world around you is dizzy. Don’t let yourself become dizzy with it.”