Living the Present

Some of us replay the past and some of us live in next week, and a good stretch can fool us as easily as a bad one. Parshas Re'eh opens with Hashem saying He gives the blessing and the curse "today." Why the word "hayom"? Rabbeinu Bechaye reads it as advice for how to live, and it speaks both to someone riding high and to someone who is struggling. A story follows of a village family whose three horses ran off, and of the one sentence the father answered every neighbor who came to console him.