Finding Joy in the Midst of the Oy!

Even if you don’t know any Yiddish, or any Jewish people, you’ve probably heard the expression “Oy!” before. The word is often exclaimed when anything from a minor aggravation occurs, like misplacing your keys momentarily, to a bigger issue like finding out your mother-in-law is coming for dinner at 5:15 p.m. and it’s 5:00 p.m. “Oy“can be muttered under one’s breath, more a sigh than a word really, or it can be said at full volume with more angst or exclamation behind it. “Oy!” or “Oy, yoi, yoi!” are common expressions of the word “Oy“.

Taking “Oy!” a step further, “Oy Vey!” or “Oy Vey iz mir!“usually escapes from one’s mouth when things of a more urgent nature occur, like when your car dies on the way to work or you realize your bank account is in the negative.

To fully illustrate the phrase, “Oy Vey!“, a memory comes to mind from traveling with my parents as a young girl. My parents were a picture of the typical loving, but slightly neurotic, Jewish couple. If you’ve ever seen old episodes of Seinfeld with Jerry’s parents, you can imagine the following scene…

We had flown into LaGuardia airport, in New York, to visit family. We got off the plane, retrieved our bags and went outside to hail a cab. (If you’ve been through LaGuardia, you know it’s one of the busiest airports in the nation, and catching a cab whizzing in an out of there isn’t exactly easy) My dad, being a native New Yorker and 6’3″, didn’t have any problems. He quickly flagged one down, and the driver darted over to the curb where we stood.

“Where ya headed?”, the cabbie with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, shouted out the window. The large numbers ‘177’ were written on the side of the cab.

“Long Island,” my dad replied in his Brooklyn accent, as we piled ourselves and our bags into the car. As we drove, my dad commented to my mom with nostalgia and excitement in his voice over being back in his native element, “Isn’t it funny, Marcia, the number of the cab is 177, like my old address in Brooklyn? 177 Highland Boulevard.”

“A funny coincidence, Jerry,” my mid-western mom mused with one eyebrow raised, mildly interested.

When we got to the hotel, he thanked the driver and handed him a bill. While we were checking in at the front desk, my dad couldn’t find his wallet. The more he fished through his pockets, the more nervous he became.

“What’s wrong, Jerry?”my mom prodded. “Where’s your wallet?”

“I don’t know…I can’t find it.” My dad scratched his head, trying to think. “I don’t know where it went. It was in my pocket in the cab.”

“Oh, Jerry, you didn’t drop it, did you?” my mom asked nervously. “Are you sure you checked all your pockets? Check again!”

Digging around further in his sport jacket and getting more anxious by the minute, he looked at my mom with panic and said, “It’s not in any of my pockets. I had all the travelers checks in there!”

“Oy! I knew it. You dropped it somewhere along the way, Jerry! When did you last have it?… You paid the cabbie…you had to have it in the cab, right?”

“I don’t know, Marcia! I can’t remember!”, he exclaimed becoming more upset.

“That’s it. You left it in the cab,” she concluded with her arms folded across her chest, as if she just knew the whole thing was going to happen beforehand.

“Oy Veyizmir!“(woe is me!), he muttered with his hand on his head, his fingers massaging his forehead. There are hundreds of cabs going through LaGaurdia every hour,” my dad said with a look of dismay on his face. “Who knows where that cab’s at now!”

“Well, we’re just going to have to call the cab company and track it down, that’s all,” my mom declared, a mixture of panic and determination in her voice. My dad dialed the cab company and told them what was going on.

“Sir, we have hundreds of cabs going in and out of LaGaurdia each hour”, the lady on the other end of the line declared what my dad already knew, in her thick New York accent. “Did you happen to catch the cab drivers’ name?” she added with the slightest bit of interest.

“No…no, it was a foreign name…I’m not sure,” my dad muttered. I don’t know what his name was!” my dad threw up his hands in panic and despair.

“Well, I’m sorry, sir, there’s no way for me to know which cab it was unless you have some identifying information like his name, or the cab number…,” she said, about to end the call.

“Wait a minute! The cab number…I know the cab number! 177!” my dad blurted out, looking triumphantly at my mom.

Relief quickly flooded over both my parents, as they realized ‘someone up above’ was looking out for them, and we weren’t going to lose hundreds of dollars worth of travelers checks before we even began our family vacation. An “Oy!” moment quickly turned into a “joy” moment as they expressed their thanks to God, with their hands turned upward toward heaven.

But sometimes, life can throw bigger curve balls than the temporary aggravation of leaving your wallet in a cab. That’s when you move into the “Oy Gevalt!” territory. “Oy Gevalt!” comes forth when one experiences a more cataclysmic event like being evicted from your homeland by edict of the czar, and life as you know it comes to a screeching halt. Or, in this century, when worldwide pandemics hit and you’re suddenly on lock down, laid off, and leery about the future. We may not be on lock down anymore but the pandemic hasn’t gone away and people are still feeling leery about the future.

Somehow, in the midst of these storms, we, as Americans, are still relentlessly in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, (or a week at the beach if you’re like me). But, happiness doesn’t last forever, and, I don’t know about you but I need something deeper, especially when things seem to be getting crazier and crazier. Something that doesn’t come from anything I can acquire or achieve. Something that will remain in spite of the tough times. Something that comes from a never-ending source. That something is joy. Joy energizes us, spurs us on and sustains us when life feels more like a series of valleys than a glorious mountaintop.

nWe’ve heard a lot about the “essentials” over the past couple years. Joy is an essential that can’t be picked up at the store or ordered on Amazon. But, it is something you can cultivate with one simple act.

The psalmist in Psalm 95, verse 4 puts it like this: “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and with song.” Throughout the Psalms, we are continually reminded of how good it is to praise the Lord. “You make me glad by your deeds, O Lord; I sing for joy at the works of your hands,” Psalm 94:4 says. When we start by thanking God for his works, which are all around us, our spirits are lifted and the God shaped hole in our heart becomes filled. We tap into the source of joy itself!

In the New Testament, Peter tells us to “count it all joy” when we come into various trials. No trial looks like an opportunity for joy when it first comes our way, but so often, it leads to a greater understanding of ourselves, others, and what’s important in this life. Whether it’s misplacing your wallet or something bigger, life’s “Oy!’s” can lead to some of life’s greatest joys if we remember to keep looking up.