6 | DECEMBER 21 • 2023
student’s corner
Three Good Things Every Day
W
ith our days so busy
and repetitive, we
don’t always fully
appreciate everything that we do.
For example, we wake up, go to
school or work,
come home to a
cozy house, eat
dinner with family
and go to sleep in
a warm bed each
night.
But what if one
day we weren’t
able to do all those things? We
would instantly become appre-
ciative of the things we lost.
We should be thankful for
everything in our lives, whether
it’s having a good lunch or a
warm bed to sleep in. We should
stop and take just one minute
each day to appreciate all that
we have.
This summer, I had the priv-
ilege of going on NCSY Jolt
Israel, a five-week summer pro-
gram that tours around Israel,
and includes a week of chessed,
community service. While we
were there, we had the oppor-
tunity to hear from Rabbi Leo
Dee, who shared with us his per-
sonal tragedy. On April 7, 2023,
his wife, Lucy, and two teenage
daughters, Maia and Rina, were
murdered in a terrorist attack
while driving to Northern Israel,
on their way to a family vaca-
tion. They were shot over 20
times. Maya and Rina died on
the scene, and Lucy passed away
three days later.
While talking with Rabbi Dee,
we asked him, “How do you
wake up every day after what
happened? How do you get
through life knowing that half
of your family is gone and won’t
come home?”
He explained that he tries to
stay as positive as possible. He
surrounds himself with people
as much as he can. His most
successful coping mechanism
was to create a group chat with a
few close friends, and every day
they would text to the chat three
good things that happened in
their day that they were happy
about or proud of. This created
a positive mindset by focusing
on the good things rather than
the bad.
After hearing Rabbi Dee’s
story, one of my advisers on Jolt,
Mo Berlin, a fellow Detroiter,
created a group chat with every-
one from the program called “3
Good Things a Day.
” Every day,
people text deep ideas, such as
challenges they overcame or cel-
ebrations as simple as sleeping, a
good dinner or not having a lot
of homework.
We are learning to appreciate
the meaningful, the simple and
everything in between. Our
chat is still very active even after
Jolt ended. These texts create a
positive mentality and a sense of
community. We are all coming
together to raise each other up.
It is very easy to get bogged
down by the bad things that
go on in our lives. We fixate on
issues, and it becomes difficult
to move past them. We need to
stop and be thankful for every-
thing in our lives, even things
that seem basic.
People need to lift each other
up and bring positivity into one
another’s lives. Ask yourself and
your friends and family, “What
are your three good things
today?”
Naomi Doppelt lives in Huntington
Woods and is an 11th grade student at
Farber Hebrew Day School.
Naomi
Doppelt
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